General information
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland and Slovakia to the west, Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and
southeast, respectively. It has an area of 603,628 sq km (233,062 sq mi),
making it the largest country entirely
within Europe and the 46th largest country in
the world.
The
country is home to 45.4 million people (including Crimea), 77.8% of whom are Ukrainians by ethnicity,
followed by a sizeable minority of Russians (17%) as well as Romanians/Moldovans, Belarusians, Crimean Tatars,
and Hungarians. Ukrainian is the official language of Ukraine ; its
alphabet is Cyrillic.
The dominant religion in the country is Eastern Orthodoxy, which has strongly
influenced Ukrainian
architecture, literature and music.
The
territory of modern Ukraine has been inhabited
since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, the area was a key centre of East Slavic culture, with the powerful state of Kievan Rus' forming the basis
of Ukrainian identity. Following its fragmentation in the 13th century, the
territory was contested, ruled and divided by a variety of powers, including Lithuania , Poland , the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary , and Russia . A Cossack republic emerged
and prospered during the 17th and 18th centuries, but its territory was
eventually split between Poland
and the Russian Empire, and later submerged fully into Russia . Two
brief periods of independence occurred during the 20th century, once near the
end of World War I and another during World
War II, but both occasions would ultimately see Ukraine's territories conquered
and consolidated into a Soviet republic, a situation that persisted until 1991,
when Ukraine gained its independence from the Soviet Union in the aftermath of
its dissolution at the end of the Cold War.