This study aimed to identify the characteristics of persuasive writing by Kyrgyz– Russian bilinguals in Kyrgyzstan. To achieve this objective, 112 university students in Kyrgyzstan were classified into four groups and asked to write the following opinion essays: (1) Kyrgyz essays by Kyrgyz monolinguals (KK), (2) Russian essays by Russian monolinguals (RR), (3) Kyrgyz essays by Kyrgyz–Russian bilinguals (Kyrgyz dominant) (KRK), and (4) Russian essays by Kyrgyz–Russian bilinguals (Russian dominant) (KRR). After the data collection, with reference to Connor and Lauer’s (1985) “Understanding Persuasive Essay Writing,” a qualitative analysis of the opinion essays was conducted from the perspective of the topic of ethos, which is related to writer’s credibility. The study results indicate that there are differences in the ethos topics used preferentially among the four groups, thus suggesting that there may be different common knowledge and different preferred topics in each linguistic community.