Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the northeast, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest and the Black Sea to the south. The historic city of Kiev (Kyiv) is the republic's capital.

From at least the ninth century the territory of present-day Ukraine was a centre of medieval East Slavic civilization that formed the state that became known as Kievan Rus and for the following several centuries the territory was divided between a number of regional powers. After a brief period of independence (1917-1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine became one of the founding Soviet Republics in 1922. The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic's territory was enlarged westward after the Second World War and finally in 1954 with the Crimea transfer.

The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine was the product of a flawed Soviet reactor design coupled with serious mistakes made by the plant operators in the context of a system where training was minimal. It was a direct consequence of Cold War isolation and the resulting lack of any safety culture. Nobody off-site suffered from acute radiation effects. However, large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees.

Ukraine became independent again after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. At the turn of 2004-2005 there was a series of protests and political events, called Orange Revolution, that took place throughout the country in response to allegations of massive corruption, voter intimidation and direct electoral fraud during the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. A second runoff found Viktor YUSHCHENKO the winner.

The dominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which is currently split between three Church bodies; the distant second is the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which practices the same liturgical and spiritual tradition as Eastern Orthodoxy, but is in communion with the See of Peter and recognizes the primacy of the Pope as head of the Church. There are also smaller groups of Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim faithful.

Ukrainian is the only official state language. Russian, which was a de facto official language in the Soviet Union, is largely used by many people, especially in eastern and southern Ukraine.

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Basic information

Full country name: Ukraine

Government type: Republic

Capital: Kiev (Kyiv)

Independence: 24 August 1991 (from the Soviet Union)

National holiday: Independence Day, 24 August (1991); the date of 22 January (1918), the day Ukraine first declared its independence (from Soviet Russia), is now celebrated as Unity Day

Area: 603,700 sq km

Administrative divisions: 24 provinces (oblasti, singular - oblast'), 1 autonomous republic (avtonomna respublika), and 2 municipalities (mista, singular - misto) with oblast status

Population: 45,700,395 (July 2009 est.)

Ethnic groups: Ukrainian 77.8%, Russian 17.3%, Belarusian 0.6%, Moldovan 0.5%, Crimean Tatar 0.5%, Bulgarian 0.4%, Hungarian 0.3%, Romanian 0.3%, Polish 0.3%, Jewish 0.2%, other 1.8% (2001 census)

Language: Ukrainian 67% - official , Russian 24%; small Romanian-, Polish-, and Hungarian-speaking minorities

Religion: Ukrainian Orthodox - Kyiv Patriarchate 50.4%, Ukrainian Orthodox - Moscow Patriarchate 26.1%, Ukrainian Greek Catholic 8%, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 7.2%, Roman Catholic 2.2%, Protestant 2.2%, Jewish 0.6%, other 3.2% (2006 est.)

GDP - per capita: $6,900 (2008 est.)

Labor force - by occupation: agriculture: 18.7%, industry: 45.2%,
services: 36.1% (2005 est.)

Unemployment rate: 3% officially registered (2008 est.); large number of unregistered or underemployed workers (around 9-10%) (2005 est.)

Population growth rate: -0.632% (2009 est.)

Source: The World Factbook. You can read full article here!