Ukraine
Name
| Official name | Ukraine (Україна) — the name alone in the constitution of 28 June 1996 (Article 1: 'a sovereign and independent, democratic, social, law-based state'); 'Ukraine' without the article in the English usage the state and most of the media adopted after 1991; the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (1919/1922–91; the UN's founding member of 24 October 1945 with the Byelorussian SSR beside the USSR), the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21; the independence of 22 January 1918) and the West Ukrainian People's Republic (1918–19), the Hetmanate of 1918; independence declared on 24 August 1991 and confirmed by 90.32% on 1 December 1991; the Council of Europe's member (1995), the WTO's (2008), the EU's candidate (23 June 2022) with the accession talks opened (25 June 2024), the ICC's state party from 1 January 2025, the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression's host state (the Council of Europe agreement of 25 June 2025) |
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| Former names | Kyivan Rus (the 9th–13th centuries; Ruthenia in the Latin), the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (1199–1349; Danylo crowned in 1253), the Grand Duchy of Lithuania's and the Polish Crown's lands ('Ukraina' the borderland of the 16th–17th centuries), the Cossack Hetmanate (1648–1764; the Zaporizhian Host), 'Little Russia' (Malorossiya) of the Russian Empire's usage (the Ukrainian national movement's rejection), Galicia and Bukovina of the Austrian Empire (1772/1775–1918), the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21), the Ukrainian SSR (1919–91), Ukraine since 1991; 'the Ukraine' of the older English usage dropped by the press in 2019–22 |
| Demonym | Ukrainian (Українець, Ukrainka) — the citizens of every nationality; the Ukrainians 77.8% and the Russians 17.3% by the 2001 census, then the Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars (the indigenous people of Crimea by the 2021 law), Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, Jews, Armenians, Greeks; the Ukrainian diaspora — Canada's about 1.3 million (the prairie settlers of 1891–1914), the United States' about 1 million, Russia's, Poland's, Kazakhstan's, Brazil's and Argentina's, and the wartime refugees of 2022–26 (about 6.9 million abroad; Germany's and Poland's about 1 million each by the counts) |
| Meaning of the name | 'Ukraine' — from the Old East Slavic 'ukraina', 'the borderland' or 'the land' (the Kyiv Chronicle's first use of 1187 for the Pereiaslav land; the 'u-kraina' — 'in the country' — reading of the Ukrainian scholars and the 'at the edge' reading of the older usage, both stated); 'Kyiv' from Kyi, the legendary founder ('Kiev' the Russian-derived spelling replaced in English by the #KyivNotKiev campaign of 2018–19); 'Dnipro' the river (the Danapris of the Greeks); 'Hoverla' from the Hungarian 'hóvár', 'the snow castle' by one reading; 'Donbas' the Donets Basin; 'Crimea' from the Crimean Tatar 'qırım', 'the fortress' |
| Motto | None by law — 'Слава Україні! Героям слава!' ('Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!') the national greeting of the 1918–20s' movements and the UPA's, revived on the Maidan of 2013–14 and the armed forces' official greeting since 2018 (the Russian line's 'nationalist' reading and the Ukrainian line's 'the defenders' honor' both stated, LAW 2); 'Воля, Злагода, Добро' ('Freedom, Accord, Goodness') proposed in the constitutional drafts of the 1990s; the anthem's 'Ukraine has not yet perished' |
Quick facts
| Capital | Kyiv (Київ) — on the Dnipro's high right bank, about 2.9–3 million by the city's pre-war count and its wartime estimates (847 km²); Kyivan Rus's capital from the late 9th century (Oleg's of 882), Saint Sophia Cathedral (1037 by the usual date) and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (1051) — UNESCO's list of 1990 and the danger list of 2023 — the Golden Gate (1037), Saint Andrew's Church (Rastrelli's of 1747–54), Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (rebuilt 1999), Khreshchatyk and the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2013–14), the Verkhovna Rada, the Mariinskyi Palace, the Motherland Monument (102 m; its Soviet emblem replaced by the trident on 6 August 2023), Babyn Yar (the massacre of 29–30 September 1941), the Kyiv Metro (1960; the shelters of the air raids), the capital of the Ukrainian SSR from 1934; the Russian advance from Belarus repelled in February–March 2022 (Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel), the missile and drone strikes since |
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| Largest cities | Kyiv (about 2.9–3 million), Kharkiv (about 1.4 million before 2022; the front-line city 30 km from the border, shelled since 2022), Odesa (about 1 million; the Black Sea port; UNESCO's historic center of 25 January 2023), Dnipro (about 0.97 million), Zaporizhzhia (about 0.7 million; the front's rear), Lviv (about 0.72 million; the west's capital — UNESCO 1998), Kryvyi Rih (the iron city; Zelenskyy's birthplace), Mykolaiv, Vinnytsia, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kherson (retaken on 11 November 2022), Sumy; the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol (the siege and the destruction of February–May 2022 — the Azovstal's last defenders of 20 May 2022), Melitopol, Sevastopol and Simferopol (Crimea) — the pre-war counts by the 2021–22 estimates and the wartime numbers unknown (both stated) |
| Official language | Ukrainian — the East Slavic language of the Cyrillic alphabet of 33 letters (the і, ї, є, ґ), the state language by the constitution's Article 10 and the language law of 25 April 2019 (in force from 16 July 2019; the schools, the media, the services in Ukrainian with the protections of the EU languages and the Crimean Tatar — the minority rights' criticism by Hungary and the Venice Commission and the state's 'the protection of the state language' both stated, LAW 2); the native language of 67.5% and Russian of 29.6% by the 2001 census, the shift to Ukrainian since 2014 and 2022 (about 80% of the people preferring Ukrainian by the 2023–25 surveys); Russian, Crimean Tatar, Hungarian (Zakarpattia), Romanian (Chernivtsi), Bulgarian, Polish, Yiddish of the past; the surzhyk of the mixed speech |
| Currency | Hryvnia (UAH; ₴; 100 kopiyok) — the currency of 2 September 1996 (the karbovanets at 100,000 to 1; the kupon of 1992–96 before), about 41–44 to the U.S. dollar and about 2.1–2.3 Indian rupees to the hryvnia by the 2025–26 market range; the National Bank of Ukraine (1991; Governor Andriy Pyshnyi since 7 October 2022) — the key rate of 25% (2022–23) cut toward 13% (2024) and raised to 15.5% (2025), 15% held in April 2026 by the Bank's line; the fixed rate of 24 February 2022 (29.25, then 36.57 from July 2022) and the 'managed flexibility' since 3 October 2023; the foreign reserves the record highs of the 2024–26 aid inflows; the notes of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1,000 hryvnias (the 1,000 of 2019 with Vernadsky) and the coins to 10 hryvnias |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (Eastern European Time) and UTC+3 in the summer (EEST; the daylight saving kept — the law to abolish it of 2024 not signed by the usual line) — the occupied territories on Moscow's UTC+3 the year round by Russia's imposition; three and a half hours behind India in the winter, two and a half in the summer; the dates in day.month.year (05.10.2026); the curfews of the martial law (midnight to 5 a.m. in Kyiv by the city's rule) |
| Calling code, internet and ISO codes | +380 (the operators Kyivstar — the first Ukrainian company listed on NASDAQ (15 August 2025) after the cyberattack of December 2023 — Vodafone Ukraine and lifecell; the Starlink terminals of the front (the whitelisting of February 2026 against the occupiers' use by the reports) and the blackouts' backup); internet .ua and .укр; the Diia state app of 2020 (the digital passports and the services — the world's first state to make the digital passport legal by the government's line); ISO 3166 UA, UKR, 804; the vehicle code UA; the IOC and FIFA code UKR; the aircraft registration UR-; the plugs of Types C and F at 230 V and 50 Hz |
| Area | 603,628 km² (233,062 sq mi) by the internationally recognized borders (603,550 by another count; both stated) — the largest country entirely in Europe and the second of Europe after Russia's European part, the 45th of the world, about 18% of India's area and about twice Rajasthan's; about 20% under Russian occupation by June 2026 (Crimea's 27,000 km² since February–March 2014, most of the Luhansk oblast, about three-quarters of the Donetsk, large parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts and border areas of Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk — the front's lines moving) — the annexation claims of 18 March 2014 (Crimea) and 30 September 2022 (four oblasts) rejected by the UN General Assembly's resolutions 68/262 (2014) and ES-11/4 (2022; 143 votes) and recognized by Russia's few allies (both stated, LAW 2); the land borders about 5,600 km (Russia about 2,000, Belarus about 1,100, Moldova about 1,200, Romania about 600, Poland about 530, Hungary about 135, Slovakia about 100) and the coast about 2,800 km |
| Population | 48,457,102 at the census of 5 December 2001 (the only census of independence; the 51.7 million of 1989 the peak), about 41 million in the government-controlled territory before the full invasion (the State Statistics Service's line of 2021–22 without Crimea), about 32.3 million by the April 2026 estimate, about 28 million in the government-controlled territory (2026) by the demographers' line and 36.7 million with the occupied areas by the UN's 2026 estimate — all stated; the refugees abroad about 6.9 million and the internally displaced about 3.7 million by the UNHCR's and the IOM's counts; the deaths about 495,090 and the births 176,679 in 2024 (the natural loss of 318,310); the fertility about 0.9 (2024) — among the world's lowest; the children deported to Russia about 19,500 by Ukraine's count (the ICC's warrant for Putin and Lvova-Belova of 17 March 2023) |
| Density | About 80 people per km² by the 2001 census on the whole area (about 70 before 2022 by the estimates) — the dense industrial east of the Donbas and the Dnipro bend and the capital region (Kyiv's about 3,500 per km²), the western oblasts of Lviv, Chernivtsi and Ivano-Frankivsk (about 100–130), the empty Polissia marshes of the north and the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (2,600 km²; abandoned since 1986), the depopulated front-line oblasts of 2022–26 (the shelled towns of the Donetsk and the Kharkiv lines emptied by the evacuations); the war's internal shift toward the west and the center |
| Religion | Christianity about 87% by the 2018 survey (the Razumkov think tank's) — the Orthodox about two-thirds: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU; the autocephaly's tomos granted by Constantinople on 5 January 2019; Metropolitan Epiphanius) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church historically of the Moscow Patriarchate (the separation declared in May 2022; the law of 24 August 2024 banning the religious ties with the Russian Orthodox Church — the state's 'national security' and the church's and the critics' 'religious freedom' both stated, LAW 2), the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church about 8–10% (the west; Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk; the Union of Brest of 1596), the Roman Catholics, the Protestants (the Baptists, the Pentecostals), the Muslims (the Crimean Tatars), the Jews (about 50,000–100,000; Uman's pilgrimage of the Breslov Hasidim each Rosh Hashanah; Zelenskyy's Jewish heritage), the irreligious about 11% by the survey |
| Government type | Unitary semi-presidential republic under the constitution of 28 June 1996 (the 2004 reform to the parliamentary-presidential model, reversed in 2010 and restored on 21 February 2014) — the President elected for five years (the head of state, the Commander-in-Chief, the foreign and defense policy), the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers appointed by the Verkhovna Rada (the Prime Minister on the President's nomination), the unicameral Rada of 450, the Constitutional Court, the anti-corruption bodies of 2015–19 (NABU, SAPO, the High Anti-Corruption Court — the July 2025 law curbing NABU's independence reversed after the protests within days); THE MARTIAL LAW since 24 February 2022 (extended every 90 days) — the elections suspended by the constitution and the 'On the Legal Regime of Martial Law' law, the general mobilization, the curfews, the 'United News' telethon; Freedom House's 'Partly Free' (about 50 of 100 by its 2025–26 lines) — the state's 'democracy at war' and the critics' 'centralization' both stated (LAW 2) |
| Head of state | President Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy (since 20 May 2019) — born 25 January 1978 at Kryvyi Rih; the Kyiv National Economic University's law graduate, the comedian of the Kvartal 95 studio and the star of 'Servant of the People' (2015–19), elected on 21 April 2019 with 73.22% in the runoff against Petro Poroshenko; the wartime leader since 24 February 2022 ('I need ammunition, not a ride' of the first days by the press's account; the Time Person of the Year of 2022); the five-year term's end of May 2024 and the martial law's postponement of the election (the constitution's Article 108 on the continuity by the Ukrainian line; Moscow's 'illegitimate' claim — both stated, LAW 2); the Oval Office clash of 28 February 2025, the minerals agreement of 30 April 2025, the White House meeting of 18 August 2025 with the European leaders, the statement of September 2025 that he would not seek a second term after the war; the Office's head Kyrylo Budanov (since 2 January 2026) after Andriy Yermak's resignation of 28 November 2025 (the NABU raid) |
| Head of government | Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi (since 16 July 2026; 289 votes in the Verkhovna Rada on President Zelenskyy's nomination; born 14 March 1978 at Lutsk; the WOG fuel chain's chief, the Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta director of November 2022, the Naftogaz chairman from 14 May 2025) after Yulia Svyrydenko (17 July 2025 – 16 July 2026; the economy minister and the minerals deal's signatory; the resignation 'that no one can explain' by an MP's line and the corruption cleanup's failure by Reuters' reading — both stated) and Denys Shmyhal (4 March 2020 – 17 July 2025; the longest-serving PM of independence); the ministers — First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal (since 14 January 2026), Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara (19 August 2026; 312 votes — the SBU's Alpha commander and the acting SBU head of January–July 2026) after Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal of 15 July 2026 (the protests for his return), Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha (since 5 September 2024); the SBU's head Oleksandr Poklad (from July 2026) |
| Legislature | The Verkhovna Rada (the Supreme Council) — 450 seats elected for five years by the mixed system of the election of 21 July 2019 (225 by the party lists and 225 in the single-member districts; the districts of Crimea and the occupied Donbas unfilled — about 400-plus deputies sitting by the counts), the term extended by the martial law (no election possible under it by the constitution); Servant of the People's single-party majority of 2019 (254 seats then; about 230 by the 2025–26 counts), the European Solidarity (Poroshenko's), Batkivshchyna (Tymoshenko's), Holos, the former OPZZh's successor groups (the OPZZh banned in 2022), Dovira, For the Future; Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk (since 8 October 2021), First Deputy Oleksandr Korniyenko, Deputy Olena Kondratiuk; the votes of 2025–26 — Svyrydenko (17 July 2025), the minerals agreement's ratification (8 May 2025), the UK century partnership (17 September 2025), Shmyhal and Fedorov (14 January 2026), Koretskyi (16 July 2026; 289), Khmara (19 August 2026; 312); the NABU law of July 2025 and its reversal |
| National Day | 24 August — Independence Day (1991; the 35th anniversary of 24 August 2026); 28 June — Constitution Day (1996); 22 January — Unity Day (the Act of Unity of 1919); 23 August — the State Flag Day; 15 July — Statehood Day (the 2021 law; the baptism of Kyivan Rus by Volodymyr); 1 October — the Day of the Defenders of Ukraine (since 2023; 14 October before — the Cossack Intercession Day); the fourth Saturday of November — the Holodomor Remembrance Day; 9 May — the Day of Europe and the Victory over Nazism Day moved to 8 May (2023); Christmas on 25 December (moved from 7 January in 2023); the martial law's suspension of the public holidays as days off (since 2022) |
| Driving side and HDI | Right (the Soviet rule; the highways of the 'Great Construction' program of 2020–21, the trains of Ukrzaliznytsia the war's lifeline); Human Development Index 0.779 (2023), 87th of 193, 'high' by the UNDP's 2025 report; the Gini 25.6 (2020) — among the world's lowest inequality by the official surveys; life expectancy about 71–73 before the war (71.4 by the 2013 official line; the war's fall by the demographers' estimates — both stated); the GDP a head about US$5,500–6,500 (2025–26 by the IMF's relayed lines on the wartime population); the poverty's rise of 2022 (about 25% by the World Bank's national line); the mobilization age 25 (lowered from 27 in April 2024) |
Flag & national symbols
| National flag | The blue and yellow bicolor — two equal horizontal bands of blue over yellow, the proportion 2:3: the blue sky over the yellow wheat fields by the popular reading (the colors of the Galician–Volhynian arms and of the 1848 Supreme Ruthenian Council of Lviv; the 'Spring of Nations' flag), the flag of the Ukrainian People's Republic of 1918 and the West Ukrainian, banned under the Soviets, raised over the Kyiv city council on 24 July 1990 and adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on 28 January 1992 (the State Flag Day of 23 August since 2004); the 90 m flagpole of Kyiv (2001) and the flags of the war's frontFlag of Ukraine |
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| Coat of arms | The Tryzub (the trident) — the golden trident on the blue shield, the small coat of arms adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on 19 February 1992 (the Ukrainian People's Republic's emblem of 1918; the sign of Volodymyr the Great on the Kyivan Rus coins of the 10th–11th centuries); the great coat of arms of the constitution's Article 20 (the drafts with the Galician lion and the Zaporizhian Cossack with the musket) the long-debated second emblem; the trident on the passports, the hryvnia, the uniforms and the Motherland Monument (6 August 2023) |
| National anthem | 'Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy' ('Ukraine has not yet perished') — the words by the ethnographer Pavlo Chubynskyi (1862), the music by the priest Mykhailo Verbytskyi (1863); the anthem of the Ukrainian People's Republic, banned under the Soviets, adopted as the music on 15 January 1992 and with the words (Chubynskyi's first verse and refrain, changed) by the law of 6 March 2003; the soldiers' and the crowds' anthem of the war (2022–26) |
| National motto | None by law — 'Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!' the armed forces' official greeting (2018) and the national greeting of the war; 'Слава нації! Смерть ворогам!' the older nationalist chant (both readings of the greetings stated, LAW 2); 'Be brave like Ukraine' the 2022 campaign's slogan; the 'Russian warship, go …' of Snake Island's defenders (24 February 2022) on the stamp of April 2022 |
| National colors | Blue and yellow (the azure and the gold of the arms) — the flag's sky and wheat, the national teams' yellow and blue (the football's yellow shirts), the Eurovision's and the war's colors across the world's cities of 2022; the red and black of the UPA's 1940s flag of the nationalists (its use both readings stated); the vyshyvanka's red and black embroidery of the folk dress (the Vyshyvanka Day of the third Thursday of May) |
| National animal | None by law — the nightingale (solovei; the national bird by the popular usage), the stork of the villages' roofs (the 'good luck' bird), the steppe's bustards and the saiga of the past, the Carpathian brown bear, the European bison of the reserves, the Askania-Nova's Przewalski's horses (occupied since 2022), the Black Sea's dolphins (the war's die-offs by the scientists' counts), the Patron — the Jack Russell terrier of the State Emergency Service's demining (the national hero of 2022; the Cannes Palm Dog of 2023) |
| National flower and tree | None by law — the sunflower (the war's symbol of 2022; Ukraine the world's first sunflower-oil exporter), the guelder rose (kalyna; the folk symbol of the songs — 'Oi u luzi chervona kalyna' the war's anthem of 2022), the wheat ears of the flag's yellow, the poppy of the remembrance (8 May), the chestnut of Kyiv's avenues (the city's emblem), the willow and the oak of the folk songs, the periwinkle (barvinok), the cherry orchards of Shevchenko's verse |
| National dish | Borscht — the beet soup with the cabbage, the potatoes and the meat or the beans, served with the smetana and the pampushky (the garlic rolls); the 'Culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking' on UNESCO's urgent-safeguarding list of 1 July 2022 (the Russian claims to the dish rejected by Ukraine — both stated, LAW 2); the varenyky (the dumplings of the potatoes, the cheese, the cherries), the holubtsi (the cabbage rolls), the salo (the cured pork fat), the deruny (the potato pancakes), the kutia of Christmas Eve, the paska of Easter, the Kyiv cake (1956) and the chicken Kyiv, the horilka (the vodka) and the uzvar (the dried-fruit drink) |
| National sport | None by law — football (Dynamo Kyiv's two Cup Winners' Cups of 1975 and 1986 under Valeriy Lobanovskyi and Shakhtar Donetsk's UEFA Cup of 2009; the national team's World Cup quarterfinal of 2006 and the Euro 2020 quarterfinal; the co-host of Euro 2012 with Poland; out of the 2026 World Cup in the playoff semifinal of 26 March 2026 — Sweden 3–1; coach Andrea Maldera since 18 May 2026 — the first foreign coach; the FIFA rank 33 of July 2026; Andriy Shevchenko's 48 goals and the Ballon d'Or of 2004), boxing (OLEKSANDR USYK — the undisputed heavyweight champion of 18 May 2024 and again of 19 July 2025; the Klitschko brothers — Vitali the Mayor of Kyiv since 2014), athletics (Serhiy Bubka's pole vault — 35 world records; Yaroslava Mahuchikh's high jump gold of Paris 2024 and the world record of 2.10 m of 7 July 2024), the Olympics' Paris 2024 haul of 12 (3-5-4; the sabre women's team gold and Oleksandr Khyzhniak's boxing gold) and the Winter Games of Milan–Cortina 2026 without a medal (46 athletes; the skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych disqualified over the helmet of the killed athletes' portraits — the IOC's 'neutrality rule' and Ukraine's 'memory' both stated, LAW 2), gymnastics, fencing, wrestling, the sumo's Aonishiki (the Ukrainian-born champion of November 2025) |
| Heritage listings | Eight World Heritage properties by UNESCO's list — Kyiv: Saint Sophia Cathedral and the related monastic buildings, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (1990), the L'viv historic center (1998), the Struve Geodetic Arc (2005; with nine states), the Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians (2007; extended 2011, 2017, 2021), the Residence of the Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans at Chernivtsi (2011), the Ancient City of Tauric Chersonese and its chora at Sevastopol (2013; in the occupied Crimea), the Wooden Tserkvas of the Carpathian region (2013; with Poland), the historic center of Odesa (25 January 2023; on the danger list at once) — Kyiv and Lviv added to the danger list on 14 September 2023; the intangible heritage — the Petrykivka decorative painting (2013), the Cossack songs of the Dnipropetrovsk region (2016; urgent), the Kosiv painted ceramics (2019), the Crimean Tatar Ornek ornament (2021), the culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking (2022; urgent) and the later inscriptions by the usual relay |
| Symbol status | The flag (28 January 1992), the small coat of arms (19 February 1992) and the anthem (15 January 1992 music; 6 March 2003 law) by the Verkhovna Rada's acts and the constitution's Article 20 (the state symbols); the State Flag Day (23 August, 2004), the Independence Day (24 August), the Constitution Day (28 June), the Statehood Day (15 July, 2021); the decommunization laws of 9 April 2015 (the Soviet and the Nazi symbols banned, the 'UPA fighters' recognized — Poland's and Israel's objections and the Ukrainian line both stated, LAW 2) and the decolonization law of 2023 (the Russian imperial names); no national flower, dish or animal by law — the sunflower, the borscht and the nightingale by custom |
Geography
| Location | Eastern Europe between 44°23′ and 52°23′ N and 22°08′ and 40°13′ E — bordered by Belarus to the north, Russia to the northeast and east, the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea to the south, Moldova and Romania to the southwest, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland to the west; the Kerch Strait to Russia's Taman (the Crimean Bridge of 2018 built by Russia without Ukraine's consent — struck in October 2022 and July 2023); the geographic center of Europe claimed near Rakhiv in Zakarpattia (the Austro-Hungarian marker of 1887; the claim among several); Kyiv at 50°27′ N, 30°31′ E — about 4,500 km from Delhi |
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| Regions | 24 oblasts (provinces), the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and two cities with special status (Kyiv and Sevastopol) by the constitution — the oblasts of Vinnytsia, Volyn, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Zakarpattia, Zaporizhzhia, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Luhansk, Lviv, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Poltava, Rivne, Sumy, Ternopil, Kharkiv, Kherson, Khmelnytskyi, Cherkasy, Chernivtsi, Chernihiv; the 136 raions (districts) and about 1,469 hromadas (territorial communities) of the decentralization reform of 2015–20 (the raions cut from 490 on 17 July 2020); the historical regions — Galicia, Volhynia, Bukovina, Transcarpathia, Podolia, Polissia, Sloboda Ukraine, the Donbas, Zaporizhzhia, Tavria, Crimea; the occupied areas under Russia's administration — the Crimea and Sevastopol since 2014, the claimed annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts of 30 September 2022 (Russia's Duma election held there on 18 September 2026 — rejected as illegal by Ukraine and its partners, both lines stated, LAW 2) |
| Highest point | Hoverla — 2,061 m (6,762 ft) in the Chornohora range of the Eastern Carpathians (the Carpathian National Nature Park; the marker of the Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia oblasts' line), the highest of Ukraine; Brebeneskul (2,035 m), Pip Ivan (2,028 m; the Polish observatory of 1938 — the 'White Elephant' — under restoration), Petros (2,020 m), Hutyn Tomnatyk (2,016 m) the other two-thousanders of the Chornohora; Roman-Kosh (1,545 m) of the Crimean Mountains; the Carpathians about 4% of the territory |
| Lowest point | The Kuialnyk estuary near Odesa — about 5 m below sea level (the salt lagoon of the mud spas); the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov at sea level; the Dnipro's lowlands and the Black Sea Lowland; the Kakhovka reservoir's floor exposed by the dam's destruction of 6 June 2023 (the 2,155 km² lake drained; the young forest grown on its bed by 2024–26) |
| Longest river | The Dnipro (Dnieper) — 2,201 km from Russia's Valdai Hills through Belarus to the Black Sea, about 981 km in Ukraine (the longest in the country; the Kyiv, Kaniv, Kremenchuk, Kamianske, Dnipro and Kakhovka (destroyed) reservoirs; the cascade's hydropower; the front line of the Kherson oblast since November 2022); the Dniester (1,362 km; the southwest and Moldova), the Southern Buh (806 km; wholly in Ukraine), the Siverskyi Donets (1,053 km; the Donbas front), the Danube's delta arm (the Izmail and Reni ports — the grain route of 2022–23), the Desna, the Prypiat (the Chornobyl river), the Tysa, the Inhulets |
| Largest lake | Lake Yalpuh (about 149 km²) of the Danube's lake group in the Odesa oblast — the largest natural freshwater lake; Svitiaz (about 26–28 km²; the Shatsk Lakes of Volyn; the deepest at about 58 m), the Synevyr of the Carpathians (the 'sea eye'), the salt Sasyk and Sivash (the 'Rotten Sea' of the Crimea's isthmus — about 2,560 km²), the Kuialnyk and the Khadzhibey estuaries; the Kremenchuk reservoir (2,250 km²) the largest water body after the Kakhovka's loss of 2023 |
| Largest island | Dzharylhach — about 56 km² of the Black Sea's sandbar island off the Kherson oblast (the national nature park; the largest island of Ukraine — in the occupied south's reach), then Khortytsia (about 25 km² in the Dnipro at Zaporizhzhia; the Zaporizhian Sich's cradle of the 16th century; the Cossack museum), Zmiinyi (Snake Island; 0.2 km² — the 'Russian warship' exchange of 24 February 2022, retaken on 30 June 2022), Berezan (the Greek colony's of the 7th century BCE), the Danube delta's Ermakov; the Tuzla spit in the Kerch Strait (the 2003 dispute with Russia) |
| Climate | Temperate continental (Dfb of the north and the center, Dfa of the south's steppe, Cfa and BSk along the Black Sea, the subtropical Mediterranean Csa of the Crimea's southern coast) — Kyiv's −4 °C January and 20 °C July mean, the snows of the winter, the 550–700 mm of rain of the north and the west, the 300–400 mm of the southern steppe, the Carpathians' 1,200–1,600 mm; the record heat of about 42 °C (Luhansk, August 2010) and the record cold of about −42 °C (Luhansk oblast, 1940); the droughts of the steppe and the floods of the Carpathian rivers (2008, 2020); the winter's blackouts of the strikes on the power grid (2022–26) the war's weather |
| Natural hazards | The floods of the Carpathian rivers (the Dniester, the Prut, the Tysa — July 2008's 39 dead, June 2020), the droughts of the south, the steppe's dust storms, the landslides of Odesa and the Carpathians, the earthquakes of the Crimea and the Vrancea zone's reach (Romania's 1977 quake felt); the man-made — THE CHORNOBYL DISASTER of 26 April 1986 (reactor 4's explosion; 31 immediate deaths, the long-term toll from about 4,000 by the WHO's line to far more by other studies — both stated; the 2,600 km² Exclusion Zone; the New Safe Confinement of 2016 hit by a Russian drone on 14 February 2025), the Kakhovka dam's destruction of 6 June 2023 (the flood of the Kherson lowlands; dozens dead; Russia's responsibility by Ukraine and most investigators and Russia's denial — both stated, LAW 2), the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant (Europe's largest; occupied since 4 March 2022; the IAEA's presence since September 2022), the war's mines (Ukraine among the world's most mined countries — about a quarter of the land suspected by the government's counts), the strikes on the energy grid |
| Nearby countries | Russia (about 2,000 km of land border plus the Azov and Kerch sea lines; the invader of 2014 and 2022 — the full-scale war since 24 February 2022), Belarus (about 1,100 km; the 2022 invasion's northern route; the Russian tactical nuclear weapons stationed there by 2023–24), Poland (about 530 km; the hub of the aid and the refugees — about 1 million Ukrainians; the grain protests of 2023–24, the Volhynia memory disputes, the White Eagle order withdrawn by President Nawrocki on 19 June 2026 by the reports — both lines stated), Slovakia (about 100 km), Hungary (about 135 km; Orbán's veto threats, the Druzhba oil pipeline's quarrels of 2025–26), Romania (about 600 km; the Danube ports, the defense and energy partnership of 12 March 2026), Moldova (about 1,200 km; Transnistria's Russian troops); across the Black Sea Türkiye (the straits closed to the warships in 2022 under Montreux; the Istanbul talks of 2022 and 2025) and Georgia |
| Minerals and resources | The 'black earth' (chornozem) — about a quarter of the world's chernozem soils and about 55–70% of the land arable (the 'breadbasket of Europe'); the iron ore of Kryvyi Rih (among the world's largest reserves), the manganese of Nikopol, the coal of the Donbas (mostly lost to the occupation), the titanium (among Europe's largest — the minerals agreement's focus), the lithium (the Shevchenkivske deposit in the Donetsk oblast taken by Russia in 2025 by the reports and the Dobra deposit of Kirovohrad), the graphite, the uranium of Kirovohrad (Europe's largest reserves by the claim), the natural gas of the Dnipro-Donets basin (Naftogaz's output; the Shebelynka), the oil, the kaolin, the salt of Soledar (lost in January 2023), the rare earths of the US–Ukraine agreement of 30 April 2025 (the joint reconstruction investment fund; ratified 8 May 2025) — the 'partnership' of the governments and the critics' 'the resources for the security' both stated (LAW 2) |
| Protected areas | About 6–7% of the land in the nature reserve fund — 19 state nature reserves (zapovidnyky), the biosphere reserves (Askania-Nova of 1898 — the steppe's oldest reserve and the Przewalski's horses, occupied since 2022; the Black Sea; the Danube; the Carpathian of 1968 — the beech forests of UNESCO), about 50 national nature parks (the Carpathian of 1980, the Synevyr, the Shatsk, the Holosiivskyi of Kyiv, the Dzharylhach), the Chornobyl Radiation and Ecological Biosphere Reserve of 2016 (the Exclusion Zone's wolves, bison and Przewalski's horses); the war's damage to about a fifth of the protected areas by the government's counts (the fires, the mines, the occupation) — the 'ecocide' charge of Ukraine and the international courts' cases |
| Extreme points | North: near Hremiach in the Chernihiv oblast (52°23′ N); South: Cape Sarych in the Crimea (44°23′ N; under occupation) — Kerch's Cape of the mainland in the Kherson oblast's south by the other line; West: near Chop in Zakarpattia (22°08′ E); East: near Rannia Zoria in the Luhansk oblast (40°13′ E; occupied); the highest Hoverla (2,061 m) and the lowest the Kuialnyk estuary (about −5 m); the 1,316 km from west to east and the 893 km from north to south by the usual counts |
| Land and water | 603,628 km² — about 579,000 km² of land and about 24,000 km² of water (about 4%; the reservoirs of the Dnipro, the lakes, the estuaries); the arable land about 56% (about 33 million hectares — among the world's largest by area; the wheat, the corn, the sunflower, the barley, the rapeseed), the forests about 16% (the Carpathians', the Polissia's), the steppe's pastures; the chernozem's fertility and the erosion; the renewable water about 175 km³ a year (mostly the Dnipro and the Danube's inflow); the land market opened on 1 July 2021 (the 2020 law's end of the moratorium; the individuals' 100 hectares, the companies' from 2024 — the reform's supporters' and the critics' lines both stated, LAW 2); the war's lands — about 20% occupied, about a quarter suspected of mines, the Kakhovka's drained bed |
| Islands and coasts | About 2,800 km of the coast on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov (most of the Azov coast and the Crimea under the occupation since 2014 and 2022 — Mariupol, Berdiansk, Henichesk, Sevastopol, Kerch, Yalta) — the ports of the Odesa region (Odesa, Chornomorsk, Pivdennyi — the 'Ukrainian corridor' of August 2023 after the Black Sea Grain Initiative of 22 July 2022 – 17 July 2023), the Danube's Izmail and Reni, Mykolaiv's and Kherson's (closed by the front); the estuaries (lymany) of the Dniester, the Dnipro–Buh and the Kuialnyk, the Kinburn spit, the Arabat Spit, the Kerch Strait; Snake Island (retaken 30 June 2022); the Black Sea Fleet of Russia driven from western Crimea by the Ukrainian drones and missiles of 2023–24 (the cruiser Moskva sunk on 14 April 2022) |
| The country | Europe's largest country within its borders in five pictures — Kyiv's gold domes on the Dnipro's hills and the metro shelters of the air raids; the wheat and the sunflower fields of the black earth to the horizon (the blue sky and the yellow fields of the flag); the green Carpathians of the Hutsuls and Lviv's coffee houses of the Austrian past; Odesa's steps and the Black Sea ports of the grain corridor; the industrial east of the Donbas and the Dnipro bend — Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia — and the front line of the war since 2014 and 2022 (about 20% occupied; the ruined Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Pokrovsk), the 6.9 million refugees and the soldiers; the borscht, the vyshyvanka, the Cossack past, Shevchenko's verse and the language's revival — the state as of 5 October 2026: at war, without a ceasefire, its EU accession talks open |
People
| Population | 48,457,102 at the census of 5 December 2001 (the only census of independence; 51,452,034 at the Soviet census of 1989 — the peak) — about 41.4 million by the State Statistics Service's line of May 2021 (without Crimea and the occupied Donbas), about 32.3 million by the April 2026 estimate, about 28.7 million (2025) and about 28 million (2026) in the government-controlled territory by the demographers' lines, 36.7 million with the occupied areas by the UN's 2026 estimate, 33.4 million by the IMF's 2024 line — all stated (the next census postponed by the war); the refugees abroad about 6.9 million (the UNHCR's count; Germany's and Poland's about a million each, the Czech Republic's, the UK's, the US's), the internally displaced about 3.7 million; the population's fall the war's and the demography's crisis |
|---|---|
| Growth rate | Negative since 1993 — the natural loss of 318,310 in 2024 (176,679 births against 495,090 deaths by the State Statistics' count) and of 162,200 in January–June 2025 (86,795 births, 248,995 deaths); the emigration of the war (about 6.9 million abroad; the men of 18–60 barred from leaving under the martial law with the exceptions — the 18–22-year-olds allowed to leave from August 2025); the demographers' projection of about 25–30 million by 2050 in the government-controlled territory (the return of the refugees the question — the surveys' 'about half intend to return' and the falling share by the year both stated, LAW 2) |
| Fertility rate | About 0.9 children per woman (2024; 0.94 in 2023 and 1.00 in 2022 by the counts — among the world's lowest with South Korea's and Taiwan's), from 1.5 in 2012 and 1.2 in 2020 — the war's separation of the families, the mobilization, the emigration of the young women; the 'demographic strategy to 2040' of September 2024 (the child payments, the housing loans of 'eOselia'), the births' falling count of 2025–26 |
| Life expectancy | About 71–73 years before the full invasion (71.4 by the 2013 official line — 66.3 for the men, 76.2 for the women; about 73 by the 2019–21 estimates) — the men's gap of about 10 years among Europe's widest; the war's fall by the demographers' estimates (to about 70 for 2022–23 by the Institute of Demography's line; the soldiers' and the civilians' deaths — both stated); the cardiovascular diseases the main cause; the HIV's and the tuberculosis' burdens among Europe's highest; the COVID-19's toll of 2020–22 (about 110,000 recorded deaths) |
| Age structure | 0–14 years about 15%, 15–64 about 66%, 65 and over about 19% by the pre-war estimates — the median age about 41–44, among Europe's oldest; the war's skew — the men of the fighting ages at the front or abroad, the children and the women among the refugees; the pensioners about 10 million (the Pension Fund's count; the pensions' indexation of each March) |
| Urbanization | About 70% urban by the pre-war lines (69.9% in 2021) — Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Lviv, Kryvyi Rih, Mykolaiv, Vinnytsia, Poltava; the industrial towns of the Donbas and the Dnipro bend; the war's destruction of the cities of the east and the south (Mariupol about 90% damaged by the 2022 estimates, Bakhmut, Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad — claimed by Russia in late 2025 — Huliaipole, Kostiantynivka) and the shift of the people to Kyiv, Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk, Uzhhorod and the west |
| Ethnic groups | Ukrainians 77.8% and Russians 17.3% by the 2001 census (72.7% and 22.1% in 1989), then the Belarusians (0.6%), the Moldovans (0.5%), the Crimean Tatars (0.5% — the indigenous people of the Crimea by the law of 1 July 2021; the deportation of 18 May 1944 — the Sürgünlik — recognized as a genocide by the Verkhovna Rada in 2015), the Bulgarians (0.4%; Bessarabia), the Hungarians (0.3%; Zakarpattia), the Romanians (0.3%; Chernivtsi), the Poles, the Jews (0.2%; the community of Dnipro's Menorah Center), the Armenians, the Greeks of Mariupol (the Azov Greeks), the Roma, the Gagauz; the identity's shift since 2014 and 2022 (the Russian speakers' Ukrainian self-identification) — the minorities' rights quarrels with Hungary and the state's 'civic nation' line both stated (LAW 2) |
| Languages | Ukrainian the state language (the native language of 67.5% by the 2001 census; the language law of 25 April 2019 — the 'On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language'; the schools' transition by 2020–24; the media quotas of 2016–17; the Language Ombudsman) — and the shift since 2022 (about 80% preferring Ukrainian in the daily use by the 2023–25 surveys from about 50% in 2012), Russian (the native language of 29.6% in 2001; the east's and the south's and the cities' common tongue — its public use cut by the law; the Russian line of 'the Russian speakers' protection' and the Ukrainian line of 'the decolonization' both stated, LAW 2), Crimean Tatar (the Latin alphabet of 2021), Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Bulgarian; English the second language of the young and the officials (the law of 2024 on English's status); the surzhyk mix |
| Religion | Christianity about 87% (the 2018 survey) — the Orthodox about 65%: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU; the unification council of 15 December 2018 and the tomos of autocephaly of 5 January 2019 from the Ecumenical Patriarch; Metropolitan Epiphanius of Kyiv; the parishes' moves from the UOC since 2022 — about 2,000 by the counts) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (the 'Moscow Patriarchate's' of Metropolitan Onufriy — the May 2022 distancing from Moscow, the law of 24 August 2024 against the religious organizations tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, the court cases of 2025–26, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra's lease ended in 2023 — the state's 'national security' and the church's 'persecution' both stated, LAW 2), the Greek Catholics (the UGCC; about 8–10%; the west), the Roman Catholics (about 1%), the Protestants (about 2%), the Muslims (about 1%; the Crimean Tatars), the Jews (about 0.2%; Uman's Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage of about 30,000–40,000 Hasidim), the irreligious about 11% |
| Health | The Ministry of Health and the National Health Service of Ukraine (the 'money follows the patient' reform of 2017–20; the 'Affordable Medicines' program), the hospitals hit by the strikes (the Okhmatdyt children's hospital of Kyiv struck on 8 July 2024 — about 1,900 attacks on the health care by the WHO's counts of 2022–25), the field surgery and the rehabilitation of the wounded (the prosthetics centers of Lviv's 'Unbroken'), the mental health of the war (the 'How Are You?' program of 2023), the HIV (about 245,000 living with it), the tuberculosis, the COVID-19's toll, the polio outbreak of 2021, the vaccination's gaps; the life expectancy about 71–73 before the war |
| Education | Free and compulsory — the 'New Ukrainian School' reform of 2017–18 (the 12-year school by 2027 by the plan), the schools' online and the underground classes of the war (Kharkiv's metro schools of 2023, the shelters), the about 3,500 schools damaged by the strikes by the 2025 counts; the universities — the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (1834), the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (1615; restored 1991), Lviv University (1661 — among the oldest of Eastern Europe), Kharkiv University (1804), the Kyiv Polytechnic (1898); the national multi-subject test (NMT) of the war replacing the ZNO; the literacy about 99.8%; the students abroad of the war and the 'brain drain' — the government's 'the education front' and the critics' 'the lost generation' both stated (LAW 2) |
| Migrants and diaspora | THE WAR'S REFUGEES — about 6.9 million abroad (the UNHCR's count; the EU's temporary protection of 4 March 2022, extended to March 2027 — about 4.3 million under it; Germany about 1.2 million, Poland about 1 million, the Czech Republic about 0.4 million, the UK's 'Homes for Ukraine' and the US's 'Uniting for Ukraine' programs), the internally displaced about 3.7 million; the old diaspora — Canada's about 1.3 million (the census's Ukrainian ancestry; the prairies of 1891–1914), the United States' about 1 million, Russia's about 1.9 million by its 2010 census, Kazakhstan's, Brazil's and Argentina's; the labor migrants of the 2010s to Poland (the 'Polish' work visas); the men's exit ban of the martial law and the refugees' return question (both lines stated, LAW 2); the children deported to Russia about 19,500 by Ukraine's count (the 'Bring Kids Back UA' returns — about 1,500 by 2025) |
| Social indicators | HDI 0.779 (2023; 87th of 193, 'high'); the Gini 25.6 (2020) — among the world's lowest by the official survey; the poverty of the war (about 25% by the World Bank's national line of 2022–24 from about 5.5% before by the $6.85 line — both stated); the minimum wage of 8,000 hryvnias a month (2025) and about 8,647 by the 2026 budget's line; the average wage about 25,000–28,000 hryvnias (2025–26); the veterans about 1.2 million by the ministry's count and their benefits; the civilian casualties — about 14,000-plus killed and 35,000-plus injured by the UN's verified count of 2022–25 (the true toll higher by its own line); the press freedom — the RSF's 60s–70s rank by the 2025 lines (the 'United News' telethon's monopoly criticized; both lines stated, LAW 2); Freedom House's 'Partly Free' |
| Cities and provinces | Kyiv (about 2.9–3 million; the special-status city), Kharkiv (about 1.4 million before 2022; the oblast's front-line north — Vovchansk's ruin), Odesa (about 1 million; the port; the strikes on the historic center), Dnipro (about 0.97 million; the rear's hub and the hospitals of the front), Zaporizhzhia (about 0.7 million; the occupied nuclear plant 50 km south), Lviv (about 0.72 million; the west's hub), Kryvyi Rih (about 0.6 million), Mykolaiv (about 0.47 million), Vinnytsia, Poltava, Chernihiv, Kherson (the right bank's capital retaken on 11 November 2022, shelled from the left bank), Sumy (the front of 2025), Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Uzhhorod, Chernivtsi; the occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Mariupol, Melitopol, Berdiansk, Nova Kakhovka, Sevastopol, Simferopol — the pre-war counts by the 2021–22 estimates and the wartime ones unknown (both stated) |
| Names and customs | The names — Volodymyr, Oleksandr, Andriy, Mykhailo, Serhii, Yuliia, Olena, Oksana, Tetiana, Nataliia (the patronymics: Oleksandrovych, Oleksandrivna; the surnames of -enko, -chuk, -iuk, -skyi, -ko); the customs — the vyshyvanka (the embroidered shirt; the Vyshyvanka Day of the third Thursday of May), the pysanky (the Easter eggs of the wax-resist painting; the Pysanka Museum of Kolomyia), the rushnyk (the ritual towel of the bread and the salt), the korovai (the wedding bread), Christmas Eve's 12 dishes and the kutia, the carols (koliadky — the 'Shchedryk' of Mykola Leontovych of 1916, the world's 'Carol of the Bells'), the Ivana Kupala night of the summer, the Hutsul culture of the Carpathians (the trembita horn), the Cossack traditions (the hopak dance, the bandura and the kobzars — the blind singers persecuted in the 1930s); the Holodomor's candles of the November Saturday |
| Media and sport culture | The media of the war — the 'United News' (the 24-hour telethon of the TV channels since 24 February 2022; its end called for by the critics — both lines stated, LAW 2), Suspilne (the public broadcaster of 2017), the Kyiv Independent (2021), Ukrainska Pravda (2000; Georgiy Gongadze's founding — his murder of 2000), the Telegram channels' news (the most used source by the 2024–25 surveys), the Russian channels banned (2014–22); Eurovision — Ruslana's win of 2004 ('Wild Dances'), Jamala's of 2016 ('1944'), the Kalush Orchestra's of 2022 ('Stefania'; the 2023 contest hosted by Liverpool for Ukraine), Leléka's ninth place of 16 May 2026; the sport — Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk (in exile at Lviv and Kyiv since 2014), Oleksandr Usyk, the Klitschkos, Andriy Shevchenko (the Ballon d'Or 2004; the Ukrainian Association of Football's president since 2024), Serhiy Bubka, Yaroslava Mahuchikh, Olha Kharlan (the sabre; the handshake disqualification of 2023), Elina Svitolina, the hundreds of Ukrainian athletes and coaches killed in the war by the sports ministry's counts |
Government
| System | Unitary semi-presidential republic under the constitution of 28 June 1996 (the 2004 amendments' parliamentary-presidential balance — annulled by the Constitutional Court in 2010 and restored by the Rada on 21–22 February 2014; the 2019 amendment writing the EU and NATO course into the preamble and Articles 85, 102 and 116) — the President directly elected for five years (two terms at most), the Verkhovna Rada of 450 for five years, the Cabinet of Ministers responsible to both, the Constitutional Court of 18, the courts and the anti-corruption bodies; THE MARTIAL LAW of 24 February 2022 (extended every 90 days by the Rada) — the elections barred while it lasts by the constitution's Article 83 and the 2015 law, the general mobilization, the curfews, the restrictions of the rallies and the media; the decentralization of 2015–20 (the hromadas); the occupied territories' status by the 2014 law; the 'democracy defending itself' of the government's line and the 'power concentrated in the President's Office' of the critics both stated (LAW 2) |
|---|---|
| Head of state | President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (since 20 May 2019; born 25 January 1978) — elected on 21 April 2019 (30.24% in the first round of 31 March, 73.22% in the runoff against Petro Poroshenko), the Commander-in-Chief of the war since 24 February 2022, the five-year term's end of 20 May 2024 overtaken by the martial law (the constitution's continuity until the next elected president takes office by Article 108 — Moscow's 'illegitimate' claim and the Ukrainian Constitutional Court's and the Western governments' acceptance both stated, LAW 2); the Office of the President — Andriy Yermak (11 February 2020 – 28 November 2025; resigned after the NABU raid in the Energoatom inquiry) and Kyrylo Budanov (since 2 January 2026; the military intelligence HUR's chief of 2020–26); the National Security and Defense Council (Secretary Rustem Umerov since July 2025 by the usual line); the September 2025 statement that he would not seek a second term after the war |
| Head of government | Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi (since 16 July 2026; 289 votes) — the Cabinet of Ministers after the resignations of July 2026 (Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko's of 14–16 July and Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov's dismissal of 15 July — the street protests in Kyiv and other cities for his return); First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal (since 14 January 2026; the Prime Minister of 2020–25 and the Defense Minister of July 2025 – January 2026), Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara (acting from 20 July, confirmed on 19 August 2026 with 312 votes; the SBU's Alpha commander), Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha (since 5 September 2024), the SBU's head Oleksandr Poklad (from July 2026 after Yevhenii Khmara's acting months and Vasyl Malyuk's resignation of 5 January 2026); the Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko's resignation of 8 September 2026 over the corruption allegations by the reports; the government's priorities — the defense, the energy's winter, the EU accession, the reconstruction |
| Legislature | The Verkhovna Rada (the Supreme Council; unicameral) — 450 seats by the mixed system (225 list, 225 single-member districts), the ninth convocation elected on 21 July 2019 (Servant of the People 254 seats — the first single-party majority of independence; Opposition Platform – For Life 43 (banned in 2022; its deputies regrouped as Platform for Life and Peace and Restoration of Ukraine), Batkivshchyna 26, European Solidarity 25, Holos 20, independents and the groups), about 400-plus deputies sitting (the occupied districts unfilled; the resignations and the deaths), the term extended by the martial law; Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk (since 8 October 2021; after Dmytro Razumkov), the factions' votes of the war — the martial law's 90-day extensions, the mobilization law of 11 April 2024, the EU-required reforms (the anti-corruption and the judiciary laws), the minerals agreement (8 May 2025), the UK century partnership (17 September 2025), the NABU law of 22 July 2025 and its reversal of 31 July 2025 after the 'cardboard protests', the Prime Ministers of 17 July 2025 (Svyrydenko) and 16 July 2026 (Koretskyi) |
| Parties | Servant of the People (2017; Zelenskyy's party — the majority of 2019), European Solidarity (Petro Poroshenko's; the main opposition — Poroshenko under the sanctions of February 2025 by the NSDC's decision, 'political persecution' by his line and 'national security' by the state's, both stated, LAW 2), Batkivshchyna (Yulia Tymoshenko's; 1999), Holos (2019; Svyatoslav Vakarchuk's founding), Svoboda, the Radical Party; the banned parties of 2022 (the Opposition Platform – For Life, the Party of Shariy and nine others by the NSDC's decision of 20 March 2022 and the courts — the 'pro-Russian' parties' ban); the political truce of the martial law and the postwar election's expected realignment (the military figures' ratings — Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the ambassador to the UK since 2024, and Kyrylo Budanov's by the polls) |
| Judiciary | The Constitutional Court (18 judges; the 2020 crisis over the anti-corruption rulings), the Supreme Court (since 2017's reform; its former president Vsevolod Kniaziev sentenced to five years on 8 June 2026 in the bribery case of 2023 by the reports), the High Anti-Corruption Court (2019), the appellate and local courts; the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU; 2015) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) — the 'Midas' case of November 2025 (the Energoatom kickbacks of about US$100 million; the businessman Tymur Mindich abroad, the former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov arrested on 18 November 2025, the Justice Minister German Galushchenko suspended on 12 November 2025 and arrested on 15 February 2026 by the reports), the High Council of Justice's reform with the international experts (the EU's conditions); the war crimes' prosecutions (about 150,000-plus registered cases by the Prosecutor General's count), the ICC's membership of 1 January 2025 and the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (the Council of Europe agreement of 25 June 2025; 36 states joined by 15 May 2026) |
| Administrative divisions | 24 oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (under Russian occupation since 2014) and two special-status cities — Kyiv and Sevastopol (occupied) — by the constitution's Article 133; the 136 raions and about 1,469 hromadas of the 2020 reform; the oblast military administrations of the martial law (the governors' military role since 24 February 2022); the occupied areas — Crimea, most of the Luhansk oblast, about three-quarters of the Donetsk, parts of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts (Russia's entry into the Dnipropetrovsk oblast acknowledged on 26 August 2025) — Russia's claimed annexations of 18 March 2014 and 30 September 2022 and its Duma election held there on 18 September 2026 (illegal by the UN General Assembly's resolutions and the Ukrainian law; Russia's 'referendums' line — both stated, LAW 2) |
| Constitution and rights | The constitution of 28 June 1996 (Chapter II's rights — the life, the dignity, the equality, the speech, the assembly, the religion, the language rights of the minorities, the property) under the martial law's restrictions (the men of 18–60 barred from leaving with the exceptions, the mobilization's enforcement by the TCCs — the 'busification' of the street detentions by the critics' line and the army's 'the defense of the country' both stated, LAW 2; the United News telethon; the bans of the parties and the Russian-linked church); the Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets; the abuses in the occupied areas documented by the UN's commission (the torture, the deportations, the filtration camps, the 19,500 children by Ukraine's count) and the Russian line's denials; Freedom House's 'Partly Free' (about 49–50 of 100), the RSF's rank of the 60s; the LGBT's civil-partnership bill pending; the Istanbul Convention ratified on 18 July 2022 |
| Military | The Armed Forces of Ukraine (ZSU; 6 December 1991) — about 880,000–1,000,000 under arms by the 2024–26 counts (the mobilization's age of 25; the volunteers' 18–24 contracts of 2025), the Ground, Air, Naval, Air Assault, Special Operations, Territorial Defense and the Unmanned Systems Forces (the world's first separate drone branch, February 2024); the National Guard, the State Border Guard Service, the HUR military intelligence, the SBU; the Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi (from 8 February 2024; after Valerii Zaluzhnyi) — his replacement by General Mykhailo Drapatyi on 21 July 2026 reported by one dated record while the army's pages still list Syrskyi (both stated pending the second source); the Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara; the Western arms (the HIMARS, the Patriots — the US sale of US$2.68 billion of the air defense of 19 September 2026, the F-16s of 2024 and the Mirages, the Leopards, the Abrams), the domestic drones and missiles (the Neptune, the Flamingo, the long-range drone strikes on Russia's refineries and airfields — Operation Spiderweb of 1 June 2025 against the strategic bombers), the drone interceptors deployed to protect the US bases in Jordan (9 March 2026 by the reports); the casualties' estimates — Zelenskyy's 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed and about 380,000 wounded (February 2025) and the higher Western estimates, the Russian losses near 1 million killed and wounded by the UK's mid-2025 line (both sides' counts disputed — stated, LAW 2) |
| Foreign relations | The European Union (the candidate of 23 June 2022; the accession talks opened on 25 June 2024 — the clusters' opening blocked by Hungary through 2025–26 by the usual line; the Ukraine Facility of €50 billion for 2024–27; the €90 billion loan for 2026–27 approved on 23 April 2026; the temporary protection of the refugees to March 2027), NATO (the partner; the Bucharest promise of 2008, the application of 30 September 2022, the Vilnius 'irreversible path' of 2023; the membership's question in the peace talks — the Russian demand of the neutrality and the Ukrainian refusal, both stated), the United States (the aid of about US$175 billion appropriated in 2022–24; the Trump administration's pause of March 2025 and the resumption, the Oval Office clash of 28 February 2025, the minerals agreement of 30 April 2025 — the reconstruction investment fund; the PURL arms purchases by the Europeans), the United Kingdom (the 100-year partnership of 16 January 2025; ratified on 17 September 2025), the 'coalition of the willing' (the UK and France's plan of the postwar reassurance force), Poland, the Baltic and the Nordic states, Germany (the largest European donor), Japan, Canada; the G7's US$50 billion ERA loans from the frozen Russian assets' profits (October 2024); Romania's defense and energy partnership (12 March 2026); Hungary and Slovakia's energy quarrels (the diesel suspension of 18 February 2026 and the electricity halt of 23 February by the reports); the Global South's neutrality; the peace talks' rounds (Istanbul 2025, Alaska's US–Russia summit of 15 August 2025, the 28-point plan of November 2025, the Geneva talks of 23 November 2025, the trilateral rounds of early 2026) without an agreement by 5 October 2026 |
| Police and security | The National Police (2015; the patrol police of the reform), the SBU (the Security Service; the counterintelligence and the long-range drone operations — the head Oleksandr Poklad from July 2026), the HUR (military intelligence), the State Border Guard Service, the National Guard, the State Emergency Service (the rescuers of the strikes; the Patron dog), the Territorial Recruitment Centers (the mobilization); the Russian strikes on the cities (the record barrages of 2025 — the more than 800 drones and missiles of single nights by the Air Force's counts), the sabotage and the assassinations (Andriy Parubiy shot dead in Lviv on 30 August 2025; the SBU's operations in Russia), the SBU–HUR shootout in Kyiv of 2 September 2026 by the reports, the Kyiv school stabbing (12 January 2026) and the supermarket shooting (18 April 2026, six dead) by the reports; the weapons' amnesties; the curfews of the martial law |
| Elections | The vote at 18 by the Central Election Commission; the presidential elections — 1 December 1991 (Leonid Kravchuk 61.6%), 1994 (Leonid Kuchma), 1999 (Kuchma), 2004 (Viktor Yushchenko after the Supreme Court's annulled runoff and the Orange Revolution's rerun of 26 December 2004), 2010 (Viktor Yanukovych), 25 May 2014 (Petro Poroshenko 54.7% in the first round), 31 March and 21 April 2019 (Volodymyr Zelenskyy 73.22%); the Rada elections — 2019 (21 July; Servant of the People 254 of 450), 2014 (26 October), 2012, 2007, 2006; the local elections of 25 October 2020; the 2024 presidential and Rada elections not held under the martial law (no election possible under it by the law; the security, the soldiers', the refugees' and the occupied areas' votes the obstacles — the government's and the critics' readings both stated, LAW 2); the postwar elections' timing — within months of the martial law's end by the 2023–26 drafts; the Russian demand of the elections as a peace condition |
| The politics of 2024–26 in dates | 8 February 2024 — Syrskyi the Commander-in-Chief; 11 April 2024 — the mobilization law; 20 May 2024 — the term's formal end and the continuity under the martial law; 25 June 2024 — the EU accession talks opened; 6 August 2024 — the Kursk incursion; 5 September 2024 — Sybiha the Foreign Minister; 1 January 2025 — the ICC membership and the Russian gas transit's end; 16 January 2025 — the UK's 100-year partnership; 28 February 2025 — the Oval Office clash; 30 April 2025 — the US minerals agreement (ratified 8 May); 16 May 2025 — the first direct talks with Russia since 2022 (Istanbul); 23–25 May 2025 — the 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner exchange; 1 June 2025 — Operation Spiderweb; 17 JULY 2025 — SVYRYDENKO THE PRIME MINISTER, Shmyhal the Defense Minister; 22–31 July 2025 — the NABU law and its reversal; 15 August 2025 — the Alaska summit; 30 August 2025 — Parubiy shot dead; 12–18 November 2025 — THE 'MIDAS' ENERGOATOM CASE; 28 NOVEMBER 2025 — YERMAK RESIGNS; 2 January 2026 — Budanov the Presidential Office head; 5 January 2026 — Malyuk out of the SBU; 14 January 2026 — Fedorov the Defense Minister, Shmyhal the First Deputy PM and Energy Minister; 15 February 2026 — Galushchenko arrested; 23 April 2026 — the EU's €90 billion; 14–16 JULY 2026 — SVYRYDENKO OUT, KORETSKYI THE PRIME MINISTER (289 votes); 15 July — Fedorov dismissed (the protests); 19 August — Khmara the Defense Minister (312); 8 September — the Prosecutor General's resignation by the reports |
| Current issues | THE WAR — the Russian advance of 2025–26 in the Donetsk (Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad claimed by Russia in late 2025 and early 2026, Kostiantynivka's fight), Zaporizhzhia (Huliaipole claimed in early 2026) and the northern border oblasts, the Ukrainian counterattacks of February 2026 (more than 200 km² retaken in 11–15 February by the reports), the drone war, the strikes on the energy grid (the energy emergency of 14 January 2026; the winter's blackouts) and Ukraine's long-range strikes on Russia's oil; no ceasefire and no peace agreement — the Russian demands (the four oblasts' cession, the neutrality, the army's limits) and the Ukrainian positions (the ceasefire on the current line first, the security guarantees, no recognition of the occupation) both stated (LAW 2); the mobilization's strains and the desertions; the corruption cases (Midas, the Prosecutor General); the government's turnover of July–August 2026; the elections' timing; the EU accession and Hungary's veto; the US policy's swings; the economy's financing (the EU's €90 billion, the IMF); the refugees' return; the reconstruction's US$500-plus billion need by the World Bank's RDNA estimates (about US$524 billion in February 2025) |
Economy
| GDP (nominal) | About US$205–225 billion for 2025–26 by the IMF's relayed lines (US$225.3 billion projected for 2026) — about 5–6% of India's GDP; the pre-war US$200 billion of 2021, the fall of 28.8% in 2022 (the war's first year), the recovery of 5.3% in 2023 and about 3% in 2024 (2.9% by the State Statistics Service and 3.6% by the other relayed series — both stated) and about 2% in 2025; the GDP a head about US$5,500–6,500 by the IMF's relayed lines on the wartime population; the defense spending about 26–31% of GDP (2023–26) — among the world's highest shares; the 'war economy' of the state's orders and the foreign financing of about US$40 billion a year |
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| GDP (PPP) | About US$830 billion by purchasing power for 2025 by the IMF's relayed lines — about US$25,000 a head by purchasing power on the wartime population; about 5% of India's purchasing-power GDP; the prices of the food low (the grain's home market) and the energy subsidized, the imports of the war dear; the occupied areas' output outside the counts |
| Growth and inflation | Growth — 3.4% (2021), −28.8% (2022), 5.3% (2023), about 3% (2024; 2.9% or 3.6% by the two series — both stated), about 2% (2025), about 1.3% for 2026 by the National Bank's April 2026 forecast (4.5% by the earlier projections — both stated); inflation 26.6% (December 2022), 5.1% (2023), 12% (December 2024), about 12.6% for 2025 by the estimate and about 9.4% for 2026 by the NBU's April 2026 forecast — the food prices, the energy tariffs, the hryvnia's moves, the war's labor shortages the drivers; the target 5% ± 1 |
| Monetary policy and the hryvnia | The National Bank of Ukraine (Governor Andriy Pyshnyi since 7 October 2022 after Kyrylo Shevchenko's resignation) — the key policy rate 25% (June 2022 – July 2023), cut to 13% by June 2024, raised to 15.5% by March 2025 and 15% held in April 2026 by the Bank's line; the exchange rate fixed at 29.25 to the U.S. dollar on 24 February 2022 and 36.57 from 21 July 2022, the 'managed flexibility' from 3 October 2023 — about 41–44 to the dollar and about 2.1–2.3 rupees to the hryvnia by the 2025–26 range; the capital controls of the war eased step by step; the foreign reserves at the record highs of the aid inflows (about US$40–50 billion by the Bank's counts of 2024–26); the banks' stability (the state's large share — PrivatBank, Oschadbank, Ukreximbank, Sense Bank) |
| Public finances | The 2026 state budget adopted in December 2025 — the defense and the security the largest share (about half of the spending; the soldiers' pay financed from the domestic revenue and the bonds), the social and the civil spending financed by the foreign grants and the loans; the deficit about 18–20% of GDP before the grants by the 2025–26 lines; the public debt about 94% of GDP (2024) and above 100% by 2025–26 by the IMF's lines; the debt restructuring of the Eurobonds (August 2024; about US$20 billion with a 37% haircut) and of the GDP warrants (2025); the foreign financing — the EU's Ukraine Facility (€50 billion for 2024–27), the G7's US$50 billion ERA loans from the frozen Russian assets' profits (2024–25), the EU's €90 billion for 2026–27 (approved 23 April 2026), the IMF's Extended Fund Facility of US$15.6 billion (March 2023) and its successor of 2026 by the reports, the World Bank's PEACE project of the wages; the tax increases of December 2024 (the military levy to 5%, the banks' 50% profit tax) |
| Structure and labor | The services about 55–60% of GDP, the industry about 20–25% (the defense production's growth — the drones' about 2–4 million a year by the 2025 counts, the artillery shells, the armored vehicles; the steel and the mining's fall), the agriculture about 8–10% (the grain and the oilseeds); the labor force about 12–13 million in the government-controlled territory, the labor shortages of the mobilization and the emigration (the employers' about 'every second firm short of workers' by the 2025 surveys), the unemployment about 10–13% by the NBU's lines (2024–25); the women's entry into the mining, the trucking and the defense jobs; the IT sector's about US$6–7 billion of exports (the 'Diia City' regime of 2022); the minimum wage 8,000 hryvnias (2025) and the average about 25,000–28,000 |
| Trade | Exports about US$41.7 billion in 2024 (the agriculture's about 60% — the corn, the wheat, the sunflower oil (the world's first exporter), the soybeans, the rapeseed; the iron ore and the steel; the IT services separately) — the EU about 59.5% of the exports by 2024; imports about US$70.7 billion (the energy, the vehicles, the machinery, the chemicals, the arms; China about 20.3% of the imports, the EU's large share); the trade deficit financed by the aid; THE BLACK SEA ROUTE — the Black Sea Grain Initiative of 22 July 2022 – 17 July 2023 (about 33 million t exported under it) and the 'Ukrainian corridor' of August 2023 that restored the Odesa ports' exports beyond the pre-war levels by 2024; the EU's autonomous trade measures of 2022–25 (the duty-free access; the Polish, Hungarian and Slovak farm bans of 2023 — both lines stated, LAW 2) and the new DCFTA quotas of 2025; the Danube ports' rerouting |
| Agriculture | The breadbasket — about 33 million hectares of arable land, the chernozem's fertility; the world's leading exporter of the sunflower oil (about 40–50% of the world's trade by the pre-war counts), among the top exporters of the corn, the wheat, the barley and the rapeseed; the harvests of the war about 55–60 million t of the grain a year in the government-controlled territory (about 84 million t in 2021); the World Food Programme's supplier (the 'Grain from Ukraine' program of November 2022 for Africa and Asia); the losses — the occupied lands, the mines (the demining's cost), the Kakhovka's irrigation (the south's dried fields), the strikes on the ports and the silos; the agroholdings (Kernel, MHP, Astarta) and the small farms; the land market of 2021; the poultry (MHP's EU exports), the honey (Europe's first producer), the berries |
| Industry | The steel (Metinvest's — Mariupol's Azovstal and Ilyich lost in 2022; Zaporizhstal, Kamet, ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih — the output about 7–8 million t a year from about 21 million t in 2021), the iron ore of Kryvyi Rih (Ferrexpo), the machinery (Motor Sich's engines, the Antonov aircraft — the An-225 Mriya destroyed at Hostomel on 27 February 2022, the Kharkiv's turbines), THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY — about 800 companies by the government's count (the drones, the 'Bohdana' howitzers, the Neptune and the Flamingo missiles, the naval drones — the Magura that sank Russian ships, the joint ventures with Rheinmetall, BAE and the Danish model of the foreign financing of the Ukrainian production), the chemicals, the food processing (the oil-extraction plants, the confectioners — Roshen), the IT and the software (EPAM's, GlobalLogic's centers; the startups — Grammarly, MacPaw); the factories moved westward from the east (about 800 relocated by the 2023 program) |
| Tourism | Collapsed by the war — the foreign tourism small (the government's warnings, the closed airspace since 24 February 2022; the 'dark tourism' of the war sites — Bucha, Irpin, Chernihiv — and the solidarity visits), the pre-war about 14 million foreign arrivals (2019); the sights — Kyiv's Saint Sophia and the Lavra, Lviv's old town (UNESCO), Odesa's Potemkin Stairs and the opera, the Carpathians' Bukovel ski resort (the largest of Eastern Europe), Kamianets-Podilskyi's fortress, the Sofiyivka park of Uman, Khortytsia, the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone's tours (2011–22; closed by the war), the Crimea's resorts (lost since 2014), the Black Sea beaches of Odesa (the mines' bans); the domestic tourism of the west's mountains |
| Energy | Nuclear about half of the pre-war electricity — Energoatom's 15 reactors at four plants: the Zaporizhzhia NPP (6 reactors; Europe's largest; occupied since 4 March 2022 and in the cold shutdown; the IAEA's mission since 1 September 2022), Rivne, Khmelnytskyi, South Ukraine — the Energoatom's 'Midas' kickback case of November 2025; the thermal plants of DTEK and Centrenergo destroyed or damaged by the Russian strikes (about half of the generation capacity lost by the 2024–25 counts), the hydropower of the Dnipro cascade (Kakhovka destroyed on 6 June 2023, DniproHES struck on 22 March 2024), the renewables (the solar and the wind; the distributed generation of the war); the gas — Naftogaz's domestic production about 19 bcm a year (2024), the storage of the west (about 30 bcm capacity — Europe's largest), the Russian gas transit's end on 1 January 2025 after 50 years; the energy emergency of 14 January 2026; the electricity imports from the EU (ENTSO-E synchronized since 16 March 2022); the blackouts' schedules of the winters 2022–26 — the 'energy terror' by Ukraine's line and the 'military targets' by Russia's (both stated, LAW 2) |
| Banks and markets | The National Bank and about 60 banks (the state banks about 50–55% of the assets — PrivatBank (nationalized December 2016), Oschadbank, Ukreximbank, Ukrgasbank, Sense Bank (nationalized 2023); the foreign — Raiffeisen, OTP, Credit Agricole, ProCredit), the deposit guarantee; the war bonds (the 'military bonds' of the Ministry of Finance; the NBU's purchases of 2022), the PFTS and the Ukrainian Exchange (the thin market), Kyivstar's NASDAQ listing (15 August 2025; the first Ukrainian company there); the ratings 'restricted default'/'selective default' during the restructurings (2024–25) and the CCC range after; the monobank (the digital bank of 10 million clients), the mobile payments; the reconstruction fund with the US (2025) and the Ukraine Recovery Conferences (Lugano 2022, London 2023, Berlin 2024, Rome 2025) |
| Infrastructure projects | The reconstruction — about US$524 billion over ten years by the World Bank, the UN, the EU and the government's RDNA4 of February 2025 (the housing, the energy, the transport, the industry); the energy's protection (the passive shields of the substations, the gas turbines and the batteries of the distributed generation, the EU's grid links), the rebuilt bridges and roads of the Kyiv and Chernihiv oblasts (2022–24), the Kyiv Metro's extensions (the Vynohradar line by the plan), the Podilskyi bridge of Kyiv, the European-gauge rail to the Polish and the Slovak borders (the Uzhhorod–Chop–Kyiv standard-gauge plan; the first 1,435 mm lines of 2024–26), the Danube ports' expansion, the shelters of the schools and the metro; the 'Fast Recovery' programs; the US–Ukraine reconstruction investment fund (2025); the Marshall-style conferences' pledges |
| Poverty and inequality | The poverty about 5.5% (2021) rising to about 24–25% (2022–24) by the World Bank's national lines (the $6.85 line; the war's job losses, the displacement, the inflation), the absolute poverty lower by the national subsistence minimum; the Gini about 25–26 (among the world's lowest by the official surveys; the oligarchs' wealth outside them — the de-oligarchization law of 2021 and the war's fall of the oligarchs' assets both stated, LAW 2); the internally displaced's payments, the 'eRecovery' compensations for the destroyed homes (2023), the 'eOselia' mortgages at 3–7%, the pensions about 6,000 hryvnias on average, the veterans' benefits; the front-line oblasts' poverty and the west's relative prosperity |
| Economic history in brief | The 'breadbasket' of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union (the Donbas coal and steel of the 1870s–1980s, the Dnipro hydropower of 1932, the Holodomor's grain requisitions of 1932–33), the Soviet economy's 16–17% share in Ukraine; independence's collapse — the GDP's fall of about 60% in 1990–99, the hyperinflation of 1993 (10,256%), the karbovanets and the hryvnia (1996), the privatization's oligarchs (Akhmetov, Kolomoisky, Pinchuk, Firtash), the growth of 2000–08 (the steel boom), the 2008–09 crisis (−14.8%), the gas wars with Russia (2006, 2009), the 2014–15 crisis (the Donbas's loss; the hryvnia from 8 to 25; −10% in 2015), the IMF's programs and the banking cleanup (about 100 banks closed in 2014–17), the EU's DCFTA (1 January 2016), the recovery of 2016–21, the full invasion's −28.8% of 2022 and the war economy since — the aid, the defense industry, the Black Sea corridor, the minerals deal, the reconstruction's plans |
Transport
| Roads | About 170,000 km of public roads (the national roads of Ukravtodor's about 47,000 km; the 'Great Construction' program of 2020–21's rebuilt highways), the international routes (the M-06 Kyiv–Chop, the M-05 Kyiv–Odesa, the M-03 Kyiv–Kharkiv, the M-10 Lviv–Krakovets), the right-hand traffic; the war's damage — the bridges blown in 2022 (Irpin's, the Kyiv oblast's about 300 bridges by the counts) and rebuilt, the front-line roads under the drone fire (the 'drone corridors' of the Donetsk and the Zaporizhzhia fronts, the anti-drone nets of 2025), the checkpoints; the trucking of the exports to the EU (the 'transport visa-free' of 2022 with the EU, the Polish truckers' border blockades of 2023–24 — both lines stated); the cars about 9–10 million by the registry |
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| Rail | Ukrzaliznytsia (the state railway; about 19,800 km of the 1,520 mm gauge — the third largest network of Europe, about half electrified) — the war's lifeline: the evacuation trains of 2022 (about 4 million people moved by the railway in the first months), the 'Iron Diplomacy' of the foreign leaders' trains to Kyiv, the freight of the grain to the Danube and the EU borders, the Intercity+ trains (Hyundai Rotem's), the night trains of the closed airspace; the standard-gauge (1,435 mm) lines toward the EU (Chop–Uzhhorod, Mostyska–Lviv by the 2024–26 works; the EU's TEN-T corridors extended to Ukraine in 2022); the strikes on the stations and the depots; the Kyiv urban rail |
| Kyiv transit | The Kyiv Metro (6 November 1960; three lines, 52 stations, about 68 km — the deep stations the air-raid shelters of millions since 2022; the Arsenalna at 105.5 m among the world's deepest), the trams (the 1892 electric tram — among the first of the Russian Empire; the Kyiv speed tram), the trolleybuses, the buses and the marshrutkas, the funicular of 1905 (Podil), the city electric train (the ring's rail), the river transport; the metros of Kharkiv (1975) and Dnipro (1995; the extension of 2024–26 by the plan) the other two; the curfews and the air-raid alerts' stoppages; the Uber and Uklon taxis |
| Air | The airspace closed to the civil flights since 24 February 2022 — the airports of Kyiv Boryspil (KBP; about 15 million passengers in 2019), Kyiv Zhuliany, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipro (destroyed by the strikes), Zaporizhzhia idle or damaged; the travelers by the trains and the buses to Rzeszów, Kraków, Chișinău, Iași and Košice; the reopening plans of Lviv and Kyiv with the air defense and the insurance (the 2025–26 proposals); Ukraine International Airlines grounded (the PS752 shot down by Iran on 8 January 2020 — 176 dead); the Antonov An-225 Mriya, the world's largest aircraft, destroyed at Hostomel on 27 February 2022 (the rebuilding pledges); the aircraft registration UR- |
| Ports and waterways | The Black Sea ports of the Odesa region — Odesa, Chornomorsk, Pivdennyi (Yuzhny) — about 90-plus million t a year by the pre-war lines and back near them via the 'Ukrainian corridor' of August 2023 (the naval drones' clearing of the western Black Sea from Russia's fleet), the Danube ports of Izmail, Reni and Ust-Dunaisk (the grain's rerouting of 2022–23; the Romanian Sulina channel), Mykolaiv's and Kherson's ports closed by the front, Mariupol and Berdiansk (the Azov ports) occupied since 2022, the Crimea's Sevastopol, Feodosia and Kerch occupied since 2014; the Dnipro's navigation (the Kakhovka's loss of 2023 ended the lower river's shipping); the shipyards of Mykolaiv; the Black Sea Grain Initiative (22 July 2022 – 17 July 2023; about 33 million t) |
| Energy and utilities | The power grid of Ukrenergo (the transmission; the ENTSO-E synchronization with the EU of 16 March 2022; the imports' capacity of about 1.7–2.1 GW by 2025), the generation's losses to the strikes (the thermal, the hydro — DniproHES of 22 March 2024 — the substations), the blackouts' schedules, the gas of Naftogaz and the Gas Transmission System Operator (the transit's end of 1 January 2025), the district heating of the cities (the winter's risk), the water (the Kakhovka's loss to the south's water supply; Mykolaiv's salt water of 2022–25), the telecoms (Kyivstar, Vodafone, lifecell; Starlink's thousands of terminals), the Diia app's e-services (the digital state of about 20 million users); the 'Invincibility Points' (the heated shelters with the power and the internet of November 2022) |
| Border crossings and bridges | With Poland (about 530 km): Krakovets–Korczowa, Shehyni–Medyka, Rava-Ruska–Hrebenne, Yahodyn–Dorohusk (the trucks' and the refugees' busiest gates; the farmers' and the truckers' blockades of 2023–24); with Slovakia: Uzhhorod–Vyšné Nemecké; with Hungary: Chop–Záhony, Tysa; with Romania: Porubne–Siret, Dyakove–Halmeu, the Danube's Orlivka–Isaccea ferry; with Moldova: Palanca–Maiaky, Mohyliv-Podilskyi–Otaci; the crossings with Russia and Belarus closed since 24 February 2022; the men's exit ban (18–60, with the exceptions; the 18–22-year-olds allowed from August 2025); the bridges — the Kerch (Crimean) Bridge built by Russia in 2018 (struck by Ukraine on 8 October 2022 and 17 July 2023; Ukraine's 'illegal structure' and Russia's line both stated), the Antonivskyi bridge of Kherson (destroyed November 2022), the Kyiv bridges (Paton's of 1953 — the world's first all-welded bridge; the Podilskyi), the Dnipro's Zaporizhzhia crossings |
History in dates
| c. 5500 BCE – 600 BCE | THE TRYPILLIA CULTURE (Cucuteni–Trypillia; c. 5500–2750 BCE) — the farmers of the forest-steppe between the Dniester and the Dnipro, the 'proto-cities' of 10,000–15,000 people (Talianky, Maidanetske; about 320 ha — among the world's largest settlements of the 4th millennium BCE by the archaeologists' line), the painted pottery; the Sredny Stog and the Yamnaya herders of the steppe (the horse's early domestication and the Indo-European homeland's hypothesis — both lines stated); the Cimmerians of the 1st millennium BCE |
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| 600 BCE – 375 CE | The Scythians of the steppe (the gold pectoral of Tovsta Mohyla; the kurgans), THE GREEK COLONIES of the Black Sea — Olbia (the 6th century BCE), Tyras, Chersonesus (the 5th century BCE; Sevastopol's — UNESCO 2013), Panticapaeum (Kerch; the Bosporan Kingdom), Berezan; the Sarmatians, the Roman and the Bosporan trade, the Goths' Chernyakhov culture (the 3rd–4th centuries) |
| 375 – 882 | The Huns (375), the Antes and the early Slavs of the forest-steppe (the 6th century), the Avars, the Khazar Khaganate's tribute over the Dnieper Slavs (the 8th–9th centuries), Kyiv's legendary founding by Kyi, Shchek, Khoryv and their sister Lybid (the 'Primary Chronicle'; the 482 date of the 1982 jubilee), the Varangians' route 'from the Varangians to the Greeks' along the Dnipro; Askold and Dir of Kyiv |
| 882 – 1240 | KYIVAN RUS — Oleg's taking of Kyiv (882), Olga's baptism (957), Sviatoslav's campaigns, VOLODYMYR THE GREAT'S BAPTISM OF RUS (988), Yaroslav the Wise (1019–54; the Ruska Pravda law code, Saint Sophia Cathedral, the Golden Gate, the marriages of his daughters to the kings of France, Norway and Hungary), the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (1051), Volodymyr Monomakh (1113–25), the fragmentation of the principalities, Andrei Bogolyubsky's sack of Kyiv (1169), THE MONGOL SACK OF KYIV (6 December 1240; Batu Khan) — the 'Rus' heritage claimed by Ukraine, Russia and Belarus (both readings stated, LAW 2) |
| 1240 – 1569 | The Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia (Danylo of Halych crowned king of Rus in 1253 by the papal legate; Lviv founded about 1256), the Golden Horde's overlordship, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania's absorption of Kyiv and Volhynia (1320s–1360s), Poland's of Galicia (1340s–1387), the Crimean Khanate (1441; the Ottoman vassal of 1475 — the slave raids on the Ukrainian lands), the Zaporizhian Sich's beginnings (Dmytro Vyshnevetskyi's fort on Khortytsia, about 1552; the Cossacks of the Dnipro's rapids), the Ostroh Bible (1581) |
| 1569 – 1654 | The Union of Lublin (1 July 1569; the Ukrainian lands passed from Lithuania to the Polish Crown of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), the Union of Brest (1596; the Greek Catholic church), the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium (1632 under Petro Mohyla; the Brotherhood school of 1615), the Cossack revolts (1590s–1638), THE KHMELNYTSKY UPRISING (1648; Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossack state — the Hetmanate — the massacres of the Jews and the Poles of 1648–49 by the chroniclers' counts, both the 'national liberation' and the 'pogroms' readings stated, LAW 2), the Pereiaslav Council (18 January 1654; the oath to the Russian tsar — the 'reunification' of the Russian line and the 'military alliance' of the Ukrainian) |
| 1654 – 1709 | THE RUIN — the Russo-Polish war, the Truce of Andrusovo (1667; the Dnipro the line — the Left Bank to Russia, the Right Bank to Poland), the Eternal Peace (1686), the Ottoman wars (Chyhyryn 1677–78), Hetman Ivan Mazepa (1687–1709; the churches of the 'Cossack Baroque', the turn to Sweden's Charles XII), THE BATTLE OF POLTAVA (8 July 1709; Peter I's victory; Mazepa's exile and the Cossack autonomy's decline), Pylyp Orlyk's constitution of 1710 (the Bendery 'constitution' — among Europe's first by the Ukrainian line) |
| 1709 – 1795 | The Hetmanate's end — the Little Russian Collegium (1722), the last hetman Kyrylo Rozumovsky (1750–64), the Hetmanate abolished (1764) and the Zaporizhian Sich destroyed by Catherine II (June 1775), the Crimean Khanate annexed by Russia (1783), New Russia's colonization of the southern steppe (Odesa founded in 1794, Kherson 1778, Mykolaiv 1789, Katerynoslav — Dnipro — 1776), the partitions of Poland (1772, 1793, 1795; Galicia to Austria in 1772, the Right Bank to Russia), Bukovina to Austria (1775), the serfdom extended to the Left Bank (1783), the Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov (Medzhybizh) |
| 1795 – 1863 | Under the two empires — the Russian 'Little Russia' and the Austrian Galicia and Bukovina; Ivan Kotliarevsky's 'Eneida' (1798; the first work of the modern Ukrainian literature), TARAS SHEVCHENKO (1814–61; the serf freed in 1838, the 'Kobzar' of 1840, the exile of 1847–57 for the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius), Kyiv University (1834), the Galician 'Ruthenian Triad' and the Supreme Ruthenian Council of 1848 (the blue and yellow), the serfdom's abolition in Austria (1848) and in Russia (1861), the Valuev Circular (1863; the Ukrainian publications restricted) |
| 1863 – 1914 | The Ems Ukaz (1876; the Ukrainian language's printing and stage banned in the Russian Empire to 1905), the Donbas's industrialization (John Hughes's Yuzivka — Donetsk — of 1869; the coal and the steel), the railways, the emigration to Canada and the US (from 1891), the pogroms of 1881–82 and 1905, the Galician national movement (the Prosvita of 1868, the Shevchenko Scientific Society, Mykhailo Hrushevsky's 'History of Ukraine-Rus' from 1898), Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, the revolution of 1905 (the battleship Potemkin's mutiny at Odesa, June 1905), the Ukrainian Duma deputies |
| 1914 – 1921 | The First World War's Galician front (the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen), THE UKRAINIAN REVOLUTION — the Central Rada (17 March 1917; Hrushevsky), the Ukrainian People's Republic proclaimed (20 November 1917) and its independence (the Fourth Universal of 22 January 1918), the Battle of Kruty (29 January 1918), the Brest-Litovsk treaty with the Central Powers (9 February 1918), Pavlo Skoropadsky's Hetmanate (April–December 1918), the West Ukrainian People's Republic (1 November 1918; Lviv) and the Act of Unity (22 January 1919; the Unity Day), the Directorate of Symon Petliura, the war with the Bolsheviks, the Whites, the Poles and the anarchist Nestor Makhno, the pogroms of 1918–20 (about 30,000–100,000 Jews killed by the estimates), the Ukrainian SSR of the Bolsheviks (1919), the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921; Galicia and Volhynia to Poland) |
| 1921 – 1932 | The Ukrainian SSR in the USSR (the treaty of 30 December 1922), the famine of 1921–23, the New Economic Policy, the 'Ukrainization' (korenizatsiya) of the 1920s (the language, the schools, the culture — the 'Executed Renaissance' generation's flowering), Kharkiv the capital (to 1934), the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (1921–30) suppressed, the collectivization from 1929 (the 'dekulakization', the deportations), the Dnipro hydroelectric station (DniproHES; 1927–32) |
| 1932 – 1939 | THE HOLODOMOR — the man-made famine of 1932–33 (the grain quotas, the 'blacklisted' villages, the ban on the peasants' movement of 22 January 1933, the 'law of five ears of grain'), about 3.5–5 million dead in the Ukrainian SSR by the demographers' estimates (3.9 million by one leading study; higher by others — all stated), recognized as a genocide by Ukraine (the law of 28 November 2006) and about 30-plus states and the European Parliament (December 2022) and denied as a genocide by Russia (both stated, LAW 2); the Great Terror of 1937–38 (the 'Executed Renaissance' — the writers of Sandarmokh shot in 1937; about 270,000 people arrested in Ukraine by the counts), Kyiv the capital again (1934), the Carpatho-Ukraine's one-day independence (15 March 1939) |
| 1939 – 1945 | The Soviet annexation of the western lands (September 1939; Galicia and Volhynia from Poland, Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia from Romania in 1940), THE NAZI INVASION (22 June 1941) — the Kyiv encirclement (September 1941; about 600,000 Soviet soldiers captured), BABYN YAR (29–30 September 1941; 33,771 Jews shot in two days — about 100,000-plus killed there in all), the Holocaust's 'Holocaust by bullets' (about 1.5 million Jews of Ukraine killed), the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the ostarbeiter deportations, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the UPA (1942; Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych — the fight against the Nazis and the Soviets and the Volhynia massacres of the Poles of 1943 (about 50,000–100,000 dead) — the heroes' and the perpetrators' readings both stated, LAW 2), Kyiv retaken (6 November 1943), the deportation of the Crimean Tatars (18 May 1944; about 190,000 deported, many dead — the Sürgünlik), the Yalta Conference (February 1945); about 7–8 million dead of the Ukrainian SSR in the war by the estimates |
| 1945 – 1985 | The postwar Ukrainian SSR — the UN's founding member (24 October 1945), the famine of 1946–47, the UPA's insurgency to the early 1950s, the 'Operation West' deportations (1947), the Crimea's transfer from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR (19 February 1954), Khrushchev's and Brezhnev's Ukrainians in the Kremlin, the first secretaries Petro Shelest (1963–72) and Volodymyr Shcherbytsky (1972–89), the 'sixtiers' dissidents (Vasyl Stus — died in the camp on 4 September 1985; Viacheslav Chornovil; the Ukrainian Helsinki Group of 1976), the industrial and the nuclear build-up (Chornobyl from 1977), the Russification of the schools |
| 1986 – 1991 | THE CHORNOBYL DISASTER (26 April 1986; reactor 4's explosion at 1:23 a.m. — the 31 immediate deaths, Pripyat's evacuation of 27 April, the silence of the first days and the May Day parade in Kyiv), the perestroika's Rukh (the People's Movement of Ukraine; September 1989), the human chain of 22 January 1990 (Lviv to Kyiv), the Declaration of State Sovereignty (16 July 1990), the student hunger strike — the 'Revolution on Granite' (October 1990), THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (24 August 1991; after the Moscow coup's failure — 346 votes of the Rada), THE REFERENDUM OF 1 DECEMBER 1991 (90.32% yes; even the Crimea's 54%) and Leonid Kravchuk the first President, the Belovezha Accords (8 December 1991; the USSR's end with Russia and Belarus) |
| 1991 – 2004 | Independence's first years — the hyperinflation (1993's 10,256%), the Black Sea Fleet's division (1997), THE BUDAPEST MEMORANDUM (5 December 1994; the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal given up for the security assurances of the US, the UK and Russia — Russia's violation of 2014 and 2022 by Ukraine's and the West's line), Leonid Kuchma President (1994–2005), the constitution of 28 June 1996, the hryvnia (2 September 1996), the Russia–Ukraine friendship treaty (1997), the Gongadze murder (September 2000) and the 'Ukraine without Kuchma' protests (2000–01), the Tuzla Island dispute (2003), the growth of the 2000s |
| 2004 – 2013 | THE ORANGE REVOLUTION (22 November 2004 – January 2005; the rigged runoff for Viktor Yanukovych, Viktor Yushchenko's dioxin poisoning, the Supreme Court's annulment and the rerun of 26 December 2004 — Yushchenko President), Yulia Tymoshenko's premierships (2005, 2007–10), the gas wars with Russia (January 2006, January 2009), the Holodomor's genocide law (2006), NATO's Bucharest promise (April 2008), Viktor Yanukovych President (February 2010), the Kharkiv Pact (2010; the Black Sea Fleet's lease to 2042), Tymoshenko's jailing (2011), the Euro 2012 with Poland, the EU association agreement's suspension (21 November 2013) |
| 2013 – 2014 | THE REVOLUTION OF DIGNITY — the Euromaidan from 21 November 2013 (the students beaten on 30 November, the 'dictatorship laws' of 16 January 2014), the killings of 18–20 February 2014 (about 100 protesters — the 'Heavenly Hundred' — and over a dozen police officers), Yanukovych's flight (22 February 2014), THE RUSSIAN SEIZURE OF CRIMEA (27 February – 18 March 2014; the 'referendum' of 16 March and the annexation treaty of 18 March — the UN General Assembly's resolution 68/262 of 27 March 2014 against it), the war in the Donbas from April 2014 (the 'people's republics' backed by the Russian forces — the 'civil war' of the Russian line and the 'Russian aggression' of the Ukrainian and the Western line, both stated, LAW 2), the Odesa clashes of 2 May 2014, Petro Poroshenko elected (25 May 2014), MH17 shot down (17 July 2014; 298 dead — the Russian Buk by the international investigation and the Dutch court of 2022), Ilovaisk (August 2014), the Minsk Protocol (5 September 2014) |
| 2015 – 2021 | Minsk II (12 February 2015) after Debaltseve, the war's frozen front (about 14,000 dead in 2014–21), the decommunization laws (April 2015), the EU's DCFTA (1 January 2016) and the visa-free travel (11 June 2017), the Kerch Strait incident (25 November 2018), the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's autocephaly (the tomos of 5 January 2019), VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY ELECTED (21 April 2019; 73.22%) and Servant of the People's majority (21 July 2019), the Normandy summit (Paris, 9 December 2019), the COVID-19 (2020–21), the land market (1 July 2021), the Russian build-up of 2021–22 and Putin's article on the 'historical unity' of Russians and Ukrainians (12 July 2021) |
| 2022 | THE FULL-SCALE INVASION — 24 February 2022 (from Belarus, Russia and the Crimea; Hostomel, the Kyiv advance, Kharkiv, Kherson taken on 2 March), the defense of Kyiv and the Russian withdrawal from the north (early April) — BUCHA's massacre revealed (about 450 civilians killed); the siege of Mariupol (Azovstal's surrender of 20 May; the theater bombing of 16 March); the cruiser Moskva sunk (14 April); the EU candidate status (23 June); Snake Island retaken (30 June); the Black Sea Grain Initiative (22 July); THE KHARKIV COUNTEROFFENSIVE (6–12 September; Izium, Balakliia); Russia's mobilization (21 September) and the annexation claims of the four oblasts (30 September — the UN General Assembly's 143 votes against, 12 October); the Kerch Bridge struck (8 October); the strikes on the energy grid from 10 October; KHERSON LIBERATED (11 November); the economy's fall of 28.8% |
| 2023 | The battles of Soledar (January) and BAKHMUT (taken by Russia's Wagner on 20 May after about 10 months), the ICC's warrant for Putin over the children's deportation (17 March), THE KAKHOVKA DAM'S DESTRUCTION (6 June), the summer counteroffensive in the south (Robotyne; the gains small against the minefields — both readings stated), Wagner's mutiny in Russia (23–24 June), the Black Sea Grain Initiative's end (17 July) and the 'Ukrainian corridor' (August), the Crimea strikes on the Black Sea Fleet (Sevastopol's headquarters, 22 September), Kyiv and Lviv on UNESCO's danger list (14 September), the Christmas moved to 25 December, the EU's decision to open the accession talks (14 December), the Avdiivka battle |
| 2024 | Avdiivka taken by Russia (17 February), Syrskyi the Commander-in-Chief (8 February), the mobilization law (11 April) and the US aid package of US$61 billion (24 April) after the six-month delay, the Kharkiv offensive of Russia (10 May), the Okhmatdyt children's hospital struck (8 July), the EU accession talks opened (25 June), the Paris Olympics (12 medals — 3 gold), THE KURSK INCURSION (from 6 August; about 1,000 km² of Russia taken at its height — the bargaining chip's line and the 'diversion' critics' both stated), the North Korean troops in Kursk (October–November), the Usyk–Fury bouts (18 May and 21 December), the G7's US$50 billion loans, Vuhledar's fall (1 October), Trump's election (5 November), Kurakhove's fall (December) |
| 2025 (January – June) | 1 January — the Russian gas transit's end, the ICC membership; 16 January — the UK's 100-year partnership; 12 February — the Trump–Putin call; 14 February — the drone strike on Chornobyl's New Safe Confinement; 28 FEBRUARY — THE OVAL OFFICE CLASH; 3–11 March — the US intelligence and aid pause, the Jeddah talks' 30-day ceasefire proposal (11 March; accepted by Ukraine, not by Russia); March — the Kursk incursion's end; 30 APRIL — THE MINERALS AGREEMENT (ratified 8 May); 16 MAY — THE ISTANBUL TALKS (the first direct talks since 2022); 23–25 May — the 1,000-for-1,000 exchange; 1 JUNE — OPERATION SPIDERWEB (the drones on the strategic bombers at four Russian airbases); 2 June — the second Istanbul round; 17 June — the deadliest strike on Kyiv of the year (about 28 dead); June — the highest monthly civilian toll of the war by the UN (232 killed); 25 June — the Special Tribunal's agreement |
| 2025 (July – December) | 17 JULY — PRIME MINISTER YULIA SVYRYDENKO (Shmyhal the Defense Minister); 22–31 July — the NABU law and its reversal after the protests; 23 July — the third Istanbul round; 15 AUGUST — THE ALASKA SUMMIT of Trump and Putin (no ceasefire); 18 August — Zelenskyy and the European leaders at the White House; 26 August — the Russian forces in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast; 30 August — Andriy Parubiy shot dead in Lviv; 17 September — the UK partnership ratified; September — Zelenskyy's no-second-term statement; November — THE US 28-POINT PEACE PLAN and the Geneva talks (23 November; the European revisions; Russia's rejection by its line); 12–18 NOVEMBER — THE 'MIDAS' ENERGOATOM CASE (Galushchenko suspended, Chernyshov arrested); 23 November — Aonishiki's sumo title; 28 NOVEMBER — YERMAK RESIGNS; 1 December — Pokrovsk claimed by Russia; December — the EU's €90 billion decision for 2026–27 |
| 2026 (January – June) | 2 JANUARY — KYRYLO BUDANOV THE PRESIDENTIAL OFFICE HEAD; 5 January — Malyuk out of the SBU (Khmara acting); 14 JANUARY — FEDOROV THE DEFENSE MINISTER, SHMYHAL THE ENERGY MINISTER; the energy emergency over the strikes; the trilateral talks of early 2026 without agreement; 6–22 February — the Winter Olympics (no medal; Heraskevych disqualified); 11–15 February — the counterattacks (more than 200 km² retaken by the reports); 15 February — Galushchenko arrested; 18–23 February — Hungary's and Slovakia's diesel and power halts; 12 March — the Romania partnership; 26 March — the World Cup playoff lost to Sweden (3–1); 23 APRIL — THE EU'S €90 BILLION APPROVED; 15 May — 36 states in the Special Tribunal; 16 May — Leléka ninth at Eurovision; 18 May — Maldera the national coach; 24 May — the Chornobyl museum destroyed by a Russian strike by the reports; 8 June — the ex-Supreme Court head sentenced; 9 June — Bulgaria's end of the arms supplies by the reports; 19 June — Poland's President withdraws Zelenskyy's White Eagle order by the reports |
| 2026 (July – October) | 14–16 JULY — SVYRYDENKO RESIGNS; SERHII KORETSKYI THE PRIME MINISTER (289 votes); 15 July — Defense Minister Fedorov dismissed (the protests for his return); 20 July — Khmara the acting Defense Minister; 21 July — Syrskyi's replacement by Drapatyi reported (one source; the army's pages still list Syrskyi — both stated); 19 AUGUST — KHMARA THE DEFENSE MINISTER (312 votes); 24 August — the 35th Independence Day; 2 September — the SBU–HUR shootout in Kyiv by the reports; 8 September — the Prosecutor General's resignation by the reports; 18 September — Russia's Duma election held in the occupied territories (illegal by Ukraine and its partners); 19 September — the US sale of US$2.68 billion of the air defense; THE STATE AS OF 5 OCTOBER 2026 — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (since 20 May 2019; under the martial law), Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi (since 16 July 2026), Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, the Presidential Office's Kyrylo Budanov; about 20% of the territory occupied; no ceasefire; the EU accession talks open; the elections awaiting the martial law's end |
| The presidents and the prime ministers | The Presidents of Ukraine — Leonid Kravchuk (5 December 1991 – 19 July 1994), Leonid Kuchma (1994–2005), Viktor Yushchenko (23 January 2005 – 25 February 2010), Viktor Yanukovych (2010 – 22 February 2014; removed by the Rada after his flight), Oleksandr Turchynov (acting; February–June 2014), Petro Poroshenko (7 June 2014 – 20 May 2019), VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY (since 20 May 2019); the Prime Ministers by the usual roll — Vitold Fokin (1990–92), Leonid Kuchma (1992–93), Yukhym Zviahilsky (acting), Vitaliy Masol, Yevhen Marchuk, Pavlo Lazarenko (1996–97), Valeriy Pustovoitenko, Viktor Yushchenko (1999–2001), Anatoliy Kinakh, Viktor Yanukovych (2002–05, 2006–07), Yulia Tymoshenko (2005, 2007–10), Yuriy Yekhanurov, Mykola Azarov (2010–14), Arseniy Yatsenyuk (2014–16), Volodymyr Groysman (2016–19), Oleksiy Honcharuk (2019–20), Denys Shmyhal (2020–25), Yulia Svyrydenko (2025–26), SERHII KORETSKYI (since 16 July 2026) |
| The war in dates (2014–2026) | 27 February 2014 — the Crimea's seizure (the annexation of 18 March); April 2014 — the Donbas war; 17 July 2014 — MH17; 5 September 2014 and 12 February 2015 — the Minsk agreements; 24 February 2022 — the full-scale invasion; March 2022 — the Istanbul talks and the Bucha revelations; 20 May 2022 — Mariupol's fall; September–November 2022 — Kharkiv and Kherson liberated; 30 September 2022 — the annexation claims; 20 May 2023 — Bakhmut's fall; 6 June 2023 — Kakhovka; 17 February 2024 — Avdiivka; 6 August 2024 — Kursk; 2025 — the Istanbul talks (16 May, 2 June, 23 July), Operation Spiderweb (1 June), the Alaska summit (15 August), the 28-point plan (November), Pokrovsk (1 December); 2026 — the trilateral rounds, Huliaipole and Myrnohrad claimed by Russia, the Ukrainian February counterattacks, about 20% occupied by June, no ceasefire by 5 October 2026 — the war's toll: about 14,000-plus civilians killed by the UN's verified count of 2022–25 and the soldiers' hundreds of thousands killed and wounded on both sides by the estimates (all counts disputed — stated, LAW 2) |
Records
| The largest country in Europe | 603,628 km² — the largest country lying entirely in Europe (Russia's European part larger); the geographic center of Europe claimed at Dilove near Rakhiv (the Austro-Hungarian marker of 1887 — among the several claims); the world's largest area of chernozem (about a quarter of the world's black earth); the Dnipro the fourth-longest river of Europe; the Kyiv Metro's Arsenalna at 105.5 m among the world's deepest stations; the Carpathians' Hoverla (2,061 m); the Danube delta's biosphere; the Askania-Nova steppe reserve (1898) among the oldest steppe reserves |
|---|---|
| The breadbasket | The world's first exporter of sunflower oil (about 40–50% of the world's trade before the war), among the top five exporters of corn, wheat and barley before 2022 (about 10% of the world's wheat exports), Europe's first honey producer; the Black Sea Grain Initiative's about 33 million t of 2022–23 and the 'Ukrainian corridor' of 2023; the 'Grain from Ukraine' program for Africa and Asia; the Holodomor (1932–33) the grain's tragedy — the breadbasket's famine |
| The firsts of the state | The Pylyp Orlyk constitution of 1710 (among Europe's first by the Ukrainian line), the first world's digital passport made legally equal to the paper one (Diia, 2021) by the government's line, the world's first military branch of the drones (the Unmanned Systems Forces of 2024), the largest nuclear arsenal ever given up (the third of the world's by 1994 — the Budapest Memorandum), the An-225 Mriya (the world's largest aircraft; destroyed in 2022), the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra's caves, the Ostroh Bible (1581; the first complete Church Slavonic Bible), Kyiv-Mohyla's Academy (1615/1632; among Eastern Europe's oldest), Mykola Leontovych's 'Shchedryk' (the world's 'Carol of the Bells'), the first single-party majority of independence (2019), the first wartime Eurovision win (2022) |
| Kyiv and the domes | Saint Sophia Cathedral (the 1030s–1037 by the usual date; the mosaics and the frescoes of the 11th century; UNESCO 1990) and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (1051; the caves of the saints; the Great Bell Tower of 96.5 m — among the tallest of its age), Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (rebuilt 1999), Saint Andrew's Church (Rastrelli's Baroque of 1747–54), Saint Volodymyr's Cathedral (1882–96), the Golden Gate (1037; rebuilt 1982), the Motherland Monument (102 m; the trident of 2023), the Babyn Yar memorial, the Maidan's Independence Monument (2001); the Lavra and Saint Sophia on UNESCO's danger list since 2023 |
| The Cossacks and the hetmans | The Zaporizhian Sich (the 16th–18th centuries; Khortytsia's and the later Siches — the Cossack 'republic' of the elected hetmans and the otamans), the Cossack Hetmanate (1648–1764) of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Ivan Vyhovsky (the Konotop victory of 1659), Petro Doroshenko, Ivan Mazepa, Pylyp Orlyk; the Cossack letter to the Sultan (Ilya Repin's painting of 1880–91), the Cossack Baroque's churches, the hopak dance, the kobzars' dumy, the Cossack Day of 1 October (the Defenders' Day since 2023); the Sich destroyed by Catherine II (1775) — the Danube Sich's exiles; the Cossack heritage in the national identity and the anthem's 'we are of the Cossack kin' |
| The sporting firsts | Oleksandr Usyk — the undisputed heavyweight champion (18 May 2024; again 19 July 2025) and the undisputed cruiserweight champion (2018) — the first since Evander Holyfield to unify both; the Klitschko brothers' heavyweight titles of 1999–2015 (Vitali the Mayor of Kyiv since 2014); Serhiy Bubka's 35 pole vault world records and the first 6 m (1985); Andriy Shevchenko's Ballon d'Or (2004) and the Champions League (2003); Dynamo Kyiv's Cup Winners' Cups (1975, 1986) and the UEFA Super Cup (1975), Shakhtar's UEFA Cup (2009); Yaroslava Mahuchikh's high jump world record (2.10 m; 7 July 2024) and the Olympic gold (Paris 2024); the Olympic total since 1996 — about 150-plus medals in the Summer Games by the counts (the gymnast Larisa Latynina's 18 Olympic medals for the USSR — the Kherson-born record holder of 1956–64); the Winter Games' golds of Oksana Baiul (1994), the biathlon women's relay (2014), Oleksandr Abramenko (2018); Milan–Cortina 2026 without a medal |
| The letters and the screen | Taras Shevchenko's 'Kobzar' (1840) — the national poet; Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Hryhorii Skovoroda (the 18th-century philosopher), Nikolai Gogol (born in Sorochyntsi, 1809 — the 'Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka'; the Russian-language writer of the Ukrainian themes), Mikhail Bulgakov (born in Kyiv, 1891), Sholem Aleichem (Pereiaslav; 'Tevye'), Andrey Kurkov's novels, Serhiy Zhadan (the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, 2022), Victoria Amelina (killed by a strike on Kramatorsk, 1 July 2023); the screen — Oleksandr Dovzhenko's 'Earth' (1930), Sergei Parajanov's 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors' (1965), Mstyslav Chernov's '20 Days in Mariupol' — the first Ukrainian Oscar (the documentary; 10 March 2024), Zelenskyy's 'Servant of the People' (2015–19); the music — 'Shchedryk', Ruslana, Jamala, the Kalush Orchestra, Okean Elzy |
| The faiths' marks | Volodymyr's baptism of Rus (988; the Statehood Day of 15 July), the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (1051) and the Pochaiv Lavra, Saint Sophia's mosaics, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's tomos (5 January 2019) — the end of Moscow's claim of 1686 by the Ukrainian and Constantinople's line (both stated, LAW 2), the Union of Brest's Greek Catholics (1596; the Saint George's Cathedral of Lviv; the Soviet ban of 1946–89 and the underground church), the Hasidism's birthplace (the Baal Shem Tov of Medzhybizh; Rebbe Nachman's tomb at Uman — the Rosh Hashanah pilgrimage), the wooden tserkvas of the Carpathians (UNESCO 2013), the Crimean Tatars' Khan's Palace of Bakhchysarai (the occupied Crimea) |
| The economic records | The fall of about 60% of the GDP in the 1990s and the hyperinflation of 10,256% (1993); the war's −28.8% (2022); the world's largest grain-corridor shipping by sea under fire (the 'Ukrainian corridor' of 2023); the Eurobond restructuring of August 2024 (about US$20 billion); the foreign financing of about US$40 billion a year (2022–26); the EU's €50 billion Ukraine Facility and the €90 billion loan for 2026–27; the G7's US$50 billion loans from the frozen Russian assets' profits; the reconstruction need of about US$524 billion (RDNA4, February 2025); the defense production's growth (the drones in the millions a year); Kyivstar's NASDAQ listing (2025); Europe's largest gas storage (about 30 bcm) and Europe's largest nuclear plant (Zaporizhzhia; occupied) |
| The rivers, the sea and the steppe | The Dnipro (2,201 km; about 981 km in Ukraine; the cascade of the reservoirs — the Kakhovka's 2,155 km² drained in 2023), the Dniester, the Danube's delta (the biosphere reserve with Romania), the Black Sea's coast and the Sea of Azov's (the world's shallowest sea — about 14 m at most), the Sivash's 'Rotten Sea', the Crimea's mountains and the southern coast's subtropics, the steppe's kurgans and the Askania-Nova, the Polissia's marshes and forests, the Carpathians' beech forests (UNESCO 2007–21) and the Synevyr lake, the Shatsk lakes, the Kamianets-Podilskyi canyon of the Smotrych |
| The wildlife's records | The European bison of the Carpathians and Polissia, the brown bear of the Carpathians (the bear rehabilitation center of Synevyr), the Przewalski's horses of Askania-Nova and the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (the 1998 release — the Zone's wildlife refuge of the wolves, the lynx, the elk), the saiga of the past, the steppe's bustards and eagles, the Black Sea's dolphins (the bottlenose, the harbor porpoise — the war's die-offs by the scientists' counts), the white stork's nests of the villages (Europe's large populations), the nightingale; the 'ecocide' of the war — the burned forests, the mined fields, the Kakhovka's lost ecosystems (both readings of the causes stated) |
| The small and the strange | The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone's wildlife and the 'Elephant's Foot'; the Kyiv Metro's 105.5 m Arsenalna; the Tunnel of Love of Klevan (the train track through the green trees); the pink Lemurian Lake of Kherson; the Patron the bomb-sniffing dog (the national hero of 2022); the 'Russian warship, go …' of Snake Island (24 February 2022) on the stamp; the tractors towing the Russian tanks (2022); the 'cardboard protests' of July 2025; the Bila Tserkva Dendropark and the Sofiyivka park; the pysanka museum in the shape of an egg (Kolomyia); the 'Shchedryk' turned 'Carol of the Bells'; the salo chocolate (the Lviv fair's novelty); the Mriya's wreck at Hostomel |
| The disasters' marks | The Mongol sack of Kyiv (1240); the famine of 1921–23; THE HOLODOMOR (1932–33; about 3.5–5 million dead by the estimates — 3.9 million by one leading study; all stated); the Great Terror (1937–38); the Second World War (about 7–8 million dead of the Ukrainian SSR; Babyn Yar's 33,771 in two days of September 1941; the Holocaust's about 1.5 million Jews of Ukraine); the Crimean Tatars' deportation (18 May 1944); the famine of 1946–47; CHORNOBYL (26 April 1986; the world's worst nuclear accident by the INES scale's level 7 with Fukushima); the Donbas war (2014–21; about 14,000 dead); MH17 (17 July 2014; 298); THE FULL-SCALE WAR (since 24 February 2022; the civilians' about 14,000-plus killed by the UN's verified count of 2022–25 — the true toll higher; the soldiers' losses of hundreds of thousands on both sides by the estimates; Mariupol's siege; Bucha; Kakhovka's flood of 6 June 2023; the strikes on the cities and the grid) — the counts disputed by the sides (stated, LAW 2) |
| The empires of the land | The Scythians and the Greek colonies, the Goths and the Huns, the Khazars, KYIVAN RUS (882–1240), the Golden Horde, the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795), the Crimean Khanate and the Ottomans of the south, the Cossack Hetmanate (1648–1764), the Russian Empire (the Left Bank from 1654–67, the south from 1774–83, the Right Bank from 1793) and the Austrian Empire (Galicia from 1772, Bukovina from 1775), the Ukrainian People's Republic (1917–21), Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia between the wars (the west), the Soviet Union (1922–91), Nazi Germany's occupation (1941–44), independent Ukraine (1991–) — and Russia's occupation of the Crimea (2014–) and of the southeast (2014/2022–) — the 'borderland' of the empires |
| The census and the counts | 48,457,102 at the census of 5 December 2001 (51,452,034 in 1989; 41.4 million by the State Statistics' 2021 line without the occupied areas); about 32.3 million (April 2026), about 28 million in the government-controlled territory (2026), 36.7 million by the UN's 2026 line with the occupied areas — all stated; the Ukrainians 77.8% and the Russians 17.3% (2001); the native Ukrainian 67.5% and Russian 29.6% (2001); the refugees about 6.9 million, the displaced about 3.7 million; the births 176,679 and the deaths 495,090 (2024); the fertility about 0.9; the area 603,628 km² (603,550 by another count) and about 20% occupied; the Rada's 450 seats; the referendum's 90.32% (1991); the 2019 runoff's 73.22%; the Koretskyi vote's 289 and the Khmara vote's 312 (2026); the Olympic medals 12 at Paris 2024 |
| The last and the next | THE LAST — the presidential election of 2019 (no election since under the martial law), the census of 2001, the Rada election of 2019, the Prime Minister's appointment of 16 July 2026, the Defense Minister's of 19 August 2026, the EU's €90 billion approval of 23 April 2026, the Istanbul, Alaska, Geneva and trilateral talks of 2025–26 without an agreement, the Winter Olympics of February 2026, the World Cup playoff of 26 March 2026, the Eurovision of 16 May 2026; THE NEXT — the martial law's next 90-day extension, the winter's energy defense of 2026–27, the peace talks' next rounds, the EU accession's negotiating clusters, the Ukraine Recovery Conference of 2026, the postwar elections (within months of the martial law's end by the drafts), the census when the war allows, the Euro 2028 qualifiers, the 2028 Olympics at Los Angeles; THE STATE AS OF 5 OCTOBER 2026 as tabled above |
Frequently asked questions
What is the official name of Ukraine?
Ukraine (Україна, Ukrayina) — the name alone in the constitution of 28 June 1996, without 'the' in the English usage the state asks for since 1991; the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR before it (1919/1922–91; a founding member of the UN in 1945), the Ukrainian People's Republic of 1917–21; independence declared on 24 August 1991 and confirmed by the referendum of 1 December 1991 (90.32% yes); the demonym Ukrainian; the anthem 'Shche ne vmerla Ukrainy'; the UN's, the Council of Europe's (1995), the WTO's (2008) and the OSCE's member, the EU's candidate since 23 June 2022 (the accession talks opened on 25 June 2024), NATO's partner (the Bucharest promise of 2008; the application of 30 September 2022).
What is the capital of Ukraine?
Kyiv — on the Dnipro in the north, about 2.9–3 million people by the pre-war count (the city's own wartime estimates near that), the capital of Kyivan Rus from the 9th century (the legendary founding by Kyi, Shchek, Khoryv and Lybid; Saint Sophia Cathedral of the 1030s and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra of 1051 on UNESCO's list since 1990, on the danger list since 2023), of the Ukrainian SSR from 1934 (Kharkiv before it) and of independent Ukraine; defended in February–March 2022 against the Russian advance from the north, struck by the missiles and the drones since; Kharkiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Lviv the next cities.
How big is Ukraine, and how many people live there?
603,628 km² (233,062 sq mi) by the internationally recognized borders — the largest country entirely in Europe, about 18% of India's area, about twice Rajasthan's; about 20% of it under Russian occupation by June 2026 (Crimea since 2014 and parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and other oblasts) — Ukraine's sovereignty over it recognized by the UN General Assembly's resolutions and Russia's annexation claims of 2014 and 2022 recognized by almost no state (both stated, LAW 2); 48,457,102 people at the only census of independence (5 December 2001), about 41 million before the full invasion, about 32.3 million by the April 2026 estimate, about 28 million in the government-controlled territory and 36.7 million with the occupied areas by the UN's 2026 line (all stated); about 6.9 million refugees abroad and 3.7 million internally displaced; the fertility about 0.9 (2024) — among the world's lowest.
What are the highest and lowest points of Ukraine?
Hoverla — 2,061 m (6,762 ft) in the Chornohora range of the Ukrainian Carpathians on the border of the Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia oblasts, the country's highest peak (the climbers' Independence Day ascents); Roman-Kosh (1,545 m) the highest of the Crimean Mountains; the lowest point the Kuialnyk estuary near Odesa at about 5 m below sea level; the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov the coasts; the Dnipro (2,201 km in all, about 981 km in Ukraine) the great river through Kyiv, Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia — the Kakhovka reservoir drained by the dam's destruction of 6 June 2023.
What currency does Ukraine use?
The hryvnia (UAH; ₴; 100 kopiyok) — introduced on 2 September 1996 to replace the karbovanets at 100,000 to 1 (the name of the Kyivan Rus silver ingots); about 41–44 hryvnias to the U.S. dollar and about 2.1–2.3 Indian rupees to the hryvnia by the 2025–26 market range; the National Bank of Ukraine (Governor Andriy Pyshnyi since October 2022; the key rate 15% held in April 2026) — the managed float of the war (the fixed rate of 2022–23 and the 'managed flexibility' since October 2023); the notes of 1 to 1,000 hryvnias (the figures of the history — Volodymyr the Great, Yaroslav the Wise, Khmelnytsky, Mazepa, Shevchenko, Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Hrushevsky, Vernadsky).
Who governs Ukraine?
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — born 25 January 1978 at Kryvyi Rih, the actor and producer of 'Servant of the People', elected on 21 April 2019 (73.22% in the runoff) and inaugurated on 20 May 2019, in office under the martial law of 24 February 2022 that postpones the elections (the constitution's continuity by the Ukrainian line; Moscow's 'illegitimacy' claim since May 2024 — both stated, LAW 2); the head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo Budanov (since 2 January 2026; the former military intelligence chief); Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi (appointed on 16 July 2026 with 289 votes; the Naftogaz chairman before) after Yulia Svyrydenko (17 July 2025 – 16 July 2026); Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara (19 August 2026; 312 votes), Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha (since 5 September 2024), First Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal (since 14 January 2026); the Verkhovna Rada of 450 seats (about 400-plus sitting) under Speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk (since 8 October 2021), the Servant of the People majority of the election of 21 July 2019.
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