Ukraine

Ukraine, the second-largest country in Europe, unfolds across 603,550 square kilometres of mostly unfettered plain, punctuated by plateaus, forests and two modest mountain ranges. Straddling latitudes 44° to 53° north and longitudes 22° to 41° east, it adjoins seven nations—Belarus to the north, Poland and Slovakia to the west, Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and Russia to the east and northeast—and fronts the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to its south and southeast. Its capital, Kyiv, presides over a population that once exceeded forty million before the upheavals of recent years, and the nation’s official tongue, Ukrainian, resonates from the Carpathian foothills to the Crimean shore.

Humans first set foot on this expanse thirty-two millennia ago, their presence attested by Paleolithic artefacts that emerge now and again from the black earth. In the ninth century a polity sprang into being, later to be named Kievan Rus′, which by the tenth and eleventh centuries ranked among the great powers of Europe, its principal cities shining with gilded domes and its mercantile routes extending across the steppe. Yet internal rivalries sundered that realm, and in 1240 the advancing Mongols extinguished its final vestiges, sending the survivors eastward or westward under the rule of Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman and Austrian Empires, or Moscow’s tsardom.

By the seventeenth century the Cossack Hetmanate arose in the central steppes, giving a fleeting taste of self-governance before its partitioning between Russia and Poland and its ultimate absorption into the Russian Empire. The dawn of the twentieth century saw the stirring of Ukrainian nationalism. Amid the convulsions of 1917 Ukraine declared itself republic, only to be subsumed into the Soviet Union by 1922 as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In the early 1930s a man-made famine, the Holodomor, claimed millions of lives, and during the Second World War the territory endured two occupations and staggering civilian losses, including most of its Jewish population.

When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Ukraine proclaimed its independence and in 1996 adopted a new constitution, pledging itself to democratic governance and market economics—an ambition impeded by endemic corruption and the persistence of state-centric legacies. The Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 brought electoral reforms, while in 2014 mass demonstrations ended in Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of conflict in Donbas. A full-scale invasion in 2022 deepened both national resolve and global concern.

Today Ukraine retains its status as a unitary, semi-presidential republic, with the sixth-largest military on the planet and a defence budget among the world’s top ten. Fertile black soils yield vast grain harvests long essential to global food security, though those yields have been imperilled by conflict. Its economy ranks lowest in nominal per-capita terms in Europe, weighed down by corruption even as it expands its ties to the European Union and applied to join NATO in 2022.

The country’s geography unfolds from the broad East European Plain, where the Dnieper, Dniester, Southern Bug and Seversky Donets rivers cleave the steppes on their southward journey to the Black Sea and to the smaller Sea of Azov. In the southwest the Danube Delta marks a watery frontier with Romania, its channels woven among marshes, and further south the Crimean Mountains rise in modest, rigid ridges, their highest peak barely two thousand metres above sea level. In the west the Carpathians ascend to Hoverla’s 2,061 metres, knotting the sky above forests that herald shifting seasons. Between these highlands lie uplands—Volyn-Podillia, Near-Dnipro, Donets Ridge, Near-Azov—lending subtle undulation to the plain.

Beneath the soil lie substantial natural wealth: lithium in nascent demand, kaolin and timber, vast stores of natural gas and, above all, earth whose churned fertility lends Ukraine its historic epithet, “breadbasket of Europe.” Yet environmental strains accrue from industrial pollution, deforestation, water scarcity in some regions and persistent radiation contamination around Chernobyl, remnants of the 1986 reactor catastrophe. War has wrought fresh ecological wounds: the deliberate destruction of the Kakhovka Dam and millions of tons of contaminated rubble have inflicted what experts name an ecocide, with recovery costs measured in tens of billions of dollars.

Climatically, Ukraine’s mid-latitude setting yields a continental regime across most of its expanse. Average annual temperatures in the north hover between 5.5 °C and 7 °C, while the southern coast enjoys milder readings of 11 °C to 13 °C. Precipitation ebbs from west to east, nourishing the Carpathians with nearly 1.2 metres of rain annually and leaving the Black Sea littoral with barely 0.4 metres. Winters chill the rivers to ice, curtailing maritime commerce; summers, in some sectors, are threatened by contracting water flows that imperil the agrarian economy as climate shifts intensify.

Transport arteries lace the nation. Over 1,600 km of navigable riverways thread seven rivers—predominantly the Danube, Dnieper and Pripyat—yet ice binds them each winter. Railways, most dense in the industrial Donbas, extend from port cities to factories and fields, preserving Ukraine’s rank as one of the world’s most rail-dependent nations. The country’s flag carrier, Ukraine International Airlines, once connected Kyiv’s Boryspil hub to Europe, the Middle East, North America and Asia, until wartime adversity curtailed civilian flight.

Before 2022, more than eight million travellers arrived annually, making Ukraine the eighth-most visited destination in Europe. The principal magnets included Kyiv with its gilded Orthodox treasures; Odesa’s terraces above the sea; Kharkiv’s broad avenues; Dnipro’s riparian stretches. Lviv, the western jewel, retains medieval streetscapes inviolate under UNESCO protection. Its Korniakt Palace and frescoed churches evoke the region’s multifarious influence, while the National Art Gallery preserves Baroque and modernist legacies alike. Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and the Pechersk Lavra monasteries gleam atop cerulean domes, presiding over Andriyivsky Uzviz, where artists and artisans converge in a flux of color and craft. Visitors once launched from Odesa’s port across to Istanbul or Varna, and ferries plied the Black Sea under Ukrferry’s banner.

Ukraine’s natural endowments extend from the rounded Carpathian summits—where trails lead through forest aisles to panoramic heights—to the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve, where reed-lined channels teem with waterfowl. At Vylkovo, the “Ukrainian Venice,” narrow canals guide wooden skiffs beneath willows and gulls, while winter sports flourish amid snowbound slopes farther west.

Population figures before the 2022 conflict tallied over forty-one million, of whom some sixty-seven percent resided in cities, chiefly in the industrial east and southeast. A modest urban density of 69.5 inhabitants per square kilometre contrasts with the European average, yet countless villages are dwindling as demographic pressures mount. Life expectancy at birth reached seventy-three years overall, with a gender gap—seventy-eight for women and sixty-eight for men.

Faith and custom interlace. Ukraine houses the world’s second-largest Eastern Orthodox community, its liturgies echoing in cathedral aisles and village churches alike. A 2021 survey recorded belief in eighty-two percent of respondents, with Western regions most devout and Donbas and eastern provinces least. Folk traditions endure: grandparents often carry chief responsibility for children, and the Orthodox calendar shapes festivities. Decorative arts such as Petrykivka painting and Kosiv ceramics trace centuries of rural craft, while Cossack songs preserve martial choreographies and epic verse.

Literary and artistic expression has borne the imprint of political upheaval. Under Stalin’s socialist realism decree of 1932, creative voices were constrained, yet by the 1980s glasnost restored latitude to experiment, yielding a renaissance that continues under independent governance. UNESCO has recognized eight Ukrainian sites, and in 2023 verified damage to over two hundred cultural properties amid warfare. Odesa’s historic core now stands inscribed on the List of World Heritage in Danger, a testament to heritage imperilled by conflict.

Easter eggs, or pysanky, exemplify an art older than Christianity on these plains. An intricate process of wax resist and dye layers renders each egg a miniature chronicle of symbol and hue. The Kolomyia Museum of Pysanka, inaugurated in 2000, embodies this legacy, itself acclaimed as a modern Ukrainian landmark.

Since 2012 the state’s Ministry of Culture has compiled an inventory of intangible heritage, enumerating 103 items by July 2024—ranging from oral lore to ritual observances—each a thread in the national fabric. Architecture mirrors history: Byzantine domes of Kievan Rus′, Polish Renaissance in Galicia, Austro-Hungarian ornament in Lviv, Russian Baroque in Kyiv, Soviet-era Khrushchyovkas stretching across urban peripheries. Today’s skylines juxtapose Soviet austerity with contemporary interventions, suggesting the unresolved dialogue between past and present.

Culinary practices reflect the confluence of soil and custom. Chicken dominates meat consumption, followed by pork and beef; vegetables—potatoes, cabbage, mushrooms and beets—supply fundamental sustenance. Pickled assortments feature as delicacies, while salo, salted pork fat, holds national acclaim. Bread crafted from rye and wheat—both thriving in fertile chernozem—underpins meals, and the repertoire includes varenyky (dumplings), nalysnyky (crêpes), kapusnyak (cabbage soup), borscht (soured beet soup) and holubtsi (cabbage rolls). Paska and korovai mark Easter and matrimonial rites, and sweet Kyiv cake commemorates capital-city lore. Beverages range from uzvar (dried-fruit compote) and ryazhanka (fermented cream) to horilka, with per-capita spirits consumption among the highest globally despite recent declines.

Ukraine’s industrial vigour, agricultural heft and cultural heritage coalesce to define a middle power in world affairs, a founding United Nations member contending with external aggression while deepening ties to European structures. Its abundant natural endowments and storied past have shaped a people resilient amid upheaval. From the frost-crusted banks of the Dnieper to the verdant slopes of the Carpathians, from the gilded spires of Kyiv to the canals of Vylkovo, Ukraine’s varied realms trace a narrative as vast and fertile as the plains themselves.