As a workaround, try updating your copy of the Cantarell font. From what I can tell by seeing your 14.04 screenshot, you have an old version installed, with no Cyrillic characters. In 12.04 it works because you have Calibri set as your UI font there, and Calibri does support Cyrillic.
** Summary changed: - Cyrillic entries render like squares in some LO widgets when libreoffice-gtk installed + LibreOffice shows squares when the UI font does not support certain characters. It does not fallback to other fonts like the rest of apps. ** Changed in: libreoffice (Ubuntu) Status: New => Triaged ** Changed in: libreoffice (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided => Medium -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1344996 Title: LibreOffice shows squares when the UI font does not support certain characters. It does not fallback to other fonts like the rest of apps. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libreoffice/+bug/1344996/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs