{ "Introduction": { "Background": { "text": "
Ukraine was the center of the first eastern Slavic state, Kyivan Rus, which during the 10th and 11th centuries was the largest and most powerful state in Europe. Weakened by internecine quarrels and Mongol invasions, Kyivan Rus was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and eventually into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The cultural and religious legacy of Kyivan Rus laid the foundation for Ukrainian nationalism through subsequent centuries. A new Ukrainian state, the Cossack Hetmanate, was established during the mid-17th century after an uprising against the Poles. Despite continuous Muscovite pressure, the Hetmanate managed to remain autonomous for well over 100 years. During the latter part of the 18th century, most Ukrainian ethnographic territory was absorbed by the Russian Empire. Following the collapse of czarist Russia in 1917, Ukraine achieved a short-lived period of independence (1917-20) but was reconquered and endured a brutal Soviet rule that engineered two forced famines (1921-22 and 1932-33) in which over 8 million died. In World War II, German and Soviet armies were responsible for 7 to 8 million more deaths. Although Ukraine achieved independence in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, democracy and prosperity remained elusive as the legacy of state control and endemic corruption stalled efforts at economic reform, privatization, and civil liberties.
A peaceful mass protest referred to as the \"Orange Revolution\" in the closing months of 2004 forced the authorities to overturn a rigged presidential election and to allow a new internationally monitored vote that swept into power a reformist slate under Viktor YUSHCHENKO. Subsequent internal squabbles in the YUSHCHENKO camp allowed his rival Viktor YANUKOVYCH to stage a comeback in parliamentary (Rada) elections, become prime minister in August 2006, and be elected president in February 2010. In October 2012, Ukraine held Rada elections, widely criticized by Western observers as flawed due to use of government resources to favor ruling party candidates, interference with media access, and harassment of opposition candidates. President YANUKOVYCH's backtracking on a trade and cooperation agreement with the EU in November 2013 - in favor of closer economic ties with Russia - and subsequent use of force against students, civil society activists, and other civilians in favor of the agreement led to a three-month protest occupation of Kyiv's central square. The government's use of violence to break up the protest camp in February 2014 led to all out pitched battles, scores of deaths, international condemnation, a failed political deal, and the president's abrupt departure for Russia. New elections in the spring allowed pro-West president Petro POROSHENKO to assume office in June 2014; he was succeeded by Volodymyr ZELENSKY in May 2019.
Shortly after YANUKOVYCH's departure in late February 2014, Russian President PUTIN ordered the invasion of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula falsely claiming the action was to protect ethnic Russians living there. Two weeks later, a \"referendum\" was held regarding the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation. The \"referendum\" was condemned as illegitimate by the Ukrainian Government, the EU, the US, and the UN General Assembly (UNGA). In response to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea, 100 members of the UN passed UNGA resolution 68/262, rejecting the \"referendum\" as baseless and invalid and confirming the sovereignty, political independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Ukraine. In mid-2014, Russia began supplying proxies in two of Ukraine's eastern provinces with manpower, funding, and materiel driving an armed conflict with the Ukrainian Government that continues to this day. Representatives from Ukraine, Russia, and the unrecognized Russian proxy republics signed the Minsk Protocol and Memorandum in September 2014 to end the conflict. However, this agreement failed to stop the fighting or find a political solution. In a renewed attempt to alleviate ongoing clashes, leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany negotiated a follow-on Package of Measures in February 2015 to implement the Minsk agreements. Representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the unrecognized Russian proxy republics, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also meet regularly to facilitate implementation of the peace deal. By early 2022, more than 14,000 civilians were killed or wounded as a result of the Russian intervention in eastern Ukraine.
On 24 February 2022, Russia escalated its conflict with Ukraine by invading the country on several fronts in what has become the largest conventional military attack on a sovereign state in Europe since World War II. The invasion has received near universal international condemnation, and many countries have imposed sanctions on Russia and supplied humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine. Russia made substantial gains in the early weeks of the invasion but underestimated Ukrainian resolve and combat capabilities. By the end of 2022, Ukrainian forces had regained all territories in the north and northeast and made some advances in the east and south. Nonetheless, Russia in late September 2022 unilaterally declared its annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts - Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia - even though none was fully under Russian control. The annexations remain unrecognized by the international community.
The invasion has also created Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. As of 21 February, 2023, approximately 18.84 million people had fled Ukraine, and 5.35 million people were internally displaced as of January 2023. Nearly 19,000 civilian casualties had been reported, as of 12 February 2023. The invasion of Ukraine remains one of the two largest displacement crises worldwide (the other is the conflict in Syria).
" } }, "Geography": { "Location": { "text": "Eastern Europe, bordering the Black Sea, between Poland, Romania, and Moldova in the west and Russia in the east" }, "Geographic coordinates": { "text": "49 00 N, 32 00 E" }, "Map references": { "text": "AsiaEurope" }, "Area": { "total": { "text": "603,550 sq km" }, "land": { "text": "579,330 sq km" }, "water": { "text": "24,220 sq km" }, "note": "note: approximately 43,133 sq km, or about 7.1% of Ukraine's area, is Russian occupied; the seized area includes all of Crimea and about one-third of both Luhans'k and Donets'k oblasts" }, "Area - comparative": { "text": "almost four times the size of Georgia; slightly smaller than Texas" }, "Land boundaries": { "total": { "text": "5,581 km" }, "border countries": { "text": "Belarus 1,111 km; Hungary 128 km; Moldova 1,202 km; Poland 498 km; Romania 601 km; Russia 1,944 km, Slovakia 97 km" } }, "Coastline": { "text": "2,782 km" }, "Maritime claims": { "territorial sea": { "text": "12 nm" }, "exclusive economic zone": { "text": "200 nm" }, "continental shelf": { "text": "200 m or to the depth of exploitation" } }, "Climate": { "text": "temperate continental; Mediterranean only on the southern Crimean coast; precipitation disproportionately distributed, highest in west and north, lesser in east and southeast; winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold farther inland; warm summers across the greater part of the country, hot in the south" }, "Terrain": { "text": "mostly fertile plains (steppes) and plateaus, with mountains found only in the west (the Carpathians) or in the extreme south of the Crimean Peninsula" }, "Elevation": { "highest point": { "text": "Hora Hoverla 2,061 m" }, "lowest point": { "text": "Black Sea 0 m" }, "mean elevation": { "text": "175 m" } }, "Natural resources": { "text": "iron ore, coal, manganese, natural gas, oil, salt, sulfur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin, nickel, mercury, timber, arable land" }, "Land use": { "agricultural land": { "text": "71.2% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: arable land": { "text": "arable land: 56.1% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: permanent crops": { "text": "permanent crops: 1.5% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: permanent pasture": { "text": "permanent pasture: 13.6% (2018 est.)" }, "forest": { "text": "16.8% (2018 est.)" }, "other": { "text": "12% (2018 est.)" } }, "Irrigated land": { "text": "4,350 sq km (2020)" }, "Major rivers (by length in km)": { "text": "Danube (shared with Germany [s], Austria, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania [m]) - 2,888 km; Dnieper river mouth (shared with Russia [s] and Belarus) - 2,287 km; Dniester river source and mouth (shared with Moldova) - 1,411 km; Vistula (shared with Poland [s/m] and Belarus) - 1,213 km
note: on 21 March 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Travel Alert for polio in Eastern Europe; Ukraine is currently considered a high risk to travelers for circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV); vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) is a strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in oral polio vaccine (OPV) and that has changed over time and behaves more like the wild or naturally occurring virus; this means it can be spread more easily to people who are unvaccinated against polio and who come in contact with the stool or respiratory secretions, such as from a sneeze, of an “infected” person who received oral polio vaccine; the CDC recommends that before any international travel, anyone unvaccinated, incompletely vaccinated, or with an unknown polio vaccination status should complete the routine polio vaccine series; before travel to any high-risk destination, the CDC recommends that adults who previously completed the full, routine polio vaccine series receive a single, lifetime booster dose of polio vaccine
" }, "Obesity - adult prevalence rate": { "text": "24.1% (2016)" }, "Alcohol consumption per capita": { "total": { "text": "5.69 liters of pure alcohol (2019 est.)" }, "beer": { "text": "2.44 liters of pure alcohol (2019 est.)" }, "wine": { "text": "0.32 liters of pure alcohol (2019 est.)" }, "spirits": { "text": "2.88 liters of pure alcohol (2019 est.)" }, "other alcohols": { "text": "0.05 liters of pure alcohol (2019 est.)" } }, "Tobacco use": { "total": { "text": "25.8% (2020 est.)" }, "male": { "text": "40% (2020 est.)" }, "female": { "text": "11.5% (2020 est.)" } }, "Children under the age of 5 years underweight": { "text": "NA" }, "Currently married women (ages 15-49)": { "text": "61.6% (2023 est.)" }, "Education expenditures": { "text": "5.4% of GDP (2020 est.)" }, "Literacy": { "definition": { "text": "age 15 and over can read and write" }, "total population": { "text": "99.8%" }, "male": { "text": "99.8%" }, "female": { "text": "99.7% (2015)" } }, "School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education)": { "total": { "text": "15 years" }, "male": { "text": "15 years" }, "female": { "text": "15 years (2014)" } }, "Youth unemployment rate (ages 15-24)": { "total": { "text": "16.5%" }, "male": { "text": "16.3%" }, "female": { "text": "16.7% (2021 est.)" } } }, "Environment": { "Environment - current issues": { "text": "air and water pollution; land degradation; solid waste management; biodiversity loss; deforestation; radiation contamination in the northeast from 1986 accident at Chornobyl' Nuclear Power Plant" }, "Environment - international agreements": { "party to": { "text": "Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Air Pollution-Sulphur 85, Antarctic-Environmental Protection, Antarctic-Marine Living Resources, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity, Climate Change, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Climate Change-Paris Agreement, Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping-London Convention, Nuclear Test Ban, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Wetlands" }, "signed, but not ratified": { "text": "Air Pollution-Heavy Metals, Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Sulfur 94, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds" } }, "Air pollutants": { "particulate matter emissions": { "text": "18.29 micrograms per cubic meter (2016 est.)" }, "carbon dioxide emissions": { "text": "202.25 megatons (2016 est.)" }, "methane emissions": { "text": "63.37 megatons (2020 est.)" } }, "Climate": { "text": "temperate continental; Mediterranean only on the southern Crimean coast; precipitation disproportionately distributed, highest in west and north, lesser in east and southeast; winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold farther inland; warm summers across the greater part of the country, hot in the south" }, "Land use": { "agricultural land": { "text": "71.2% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: arable land": { "text": "arable land: 56.1% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: permanent crops": { "text": "permanent crops: 1.5% (2018 est.)" }, "agricultural land: permanent pasture": { "text": "permanent pasture: 13.6% (2018 est.)" }, "forest": { "text": "16.8% (2018 est.)" }, "other": { "text": "12% (2018 est.)" } }, "Urbanization": { "urban population": { "text": "70.1% of total population (2023)" }, "rate of urbanization": { "text": "-0.27% annual rate of change (2020-25 est.)" } }, "Revenue from forest resources": { "forest revenues": { "text": "0.34% of GDP (2018 est.)" } }, "Revenue from coal": { "coal revenues": { "text": "0.42% of GDP (2018 est.)" } }, "Major infectious diseases": { "text": "note: on 21 March 2022, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Travel Alert for polio in Eastern Europe; Ukraine is currently considered a high risk to travelers for circulating vaccine-derived polioviruses (cVDPV); vaccine-derived poliovirus (VDPV) is a strain of the weakened poliovirus that was initially included in oral polio vaccine (OPV) and that has changed over time and behaves more like the wild or naturally occurring virus; this means it can be spread more easily to people who are unvaccinated against polio and who come in contact with the stool or respiratory secretions, such as from a sneeze, of an “infected” person who received oral polio vaccine; the CDC recommends that before any international travel, anyone unvaccinated, incompletely vaccinated, or with an unknown polio vaccination status should complete the routine polio vaccine series; before travel to any high-risk destination, the CDC recommends that adults who previously completed the full, routine polio vaccine series receive a single, lifetime booster dose of polio vaccine
" }, "Food insecurity": { "widespread lack of access": { "text": "due to conflict - production prospects of 2022 winter crops hampered by low availability of inputs, delivery challenges, difficult physical access to fields due to the war, and eventual labor shortages; forecast for cereal exports in 2022 reduced, amid port closures, damage to infrastructure and implementation of government policies to secure sufficient domestic supplies; as of early March 2022, about 12 million people estimated to be in need of life saving assistance (2022)" } }, "Waste and recycling": { "municipal solid waste generated annually": { "text": "15,242,025 tons (2016 est.)" }, "municipal solid waste recycled annually": { "text": "487,745 tons (2015 est.)" }, "percent of municipal solid waste recycled": { "text": "3.2% (2015 est.)" } }, "Major rivers (by length in km)": { "text": "Danube (shared with Germany [s], Austria, Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Moldova, and Romania [m]) - 2,888 km; Dnieper river mouth (shared with Russia [s] and Belarus) - 2,287 km; Dniester river source and mouth (shared with Moldova) - 1,411 km; Vistula (shared with Poland [s/m] and Belarus) - 1,213 km" }, "subordinate courts": { "text": "Courts of Appeal; district courts" }, "note": "note: specialized courts were abolished as part of Ukraine's judicial reform program; in November 2019, President ZELENSKYY signed a bill on legal reforms" }, "Political parties and leaders": { "text": "Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) [Yuliya TYMOSHENKO]
Ukraine television serves as the principal source of news; the largest national networks are controlled by oligarchs: TRK Ukraina is owned by Rinat Akhmetov; Studio 1+1 is owned by Ihor Kolomoyskyy; Inter is owned by Dmytro Firtash and Serhiy Lyovochkin; and StarlightMedia channels (ICTV, STB, and Novyi Kanal) are owned by Victor Pinchuk; a set of 24-hour news channels also have clear political affiliations: pro-Ukrainian government Channel 5 and Pryamyi are linked to President Petro Poroshenko; 24 is owned by opposition, but not pro-Russian, politicians; UA: Suspilne is a public television station under the umbrella of the National Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine; while it is often praised by media experts for balanced coverage, it lags in popularity; Ukrainian Radio, institutionally linked to UA: Suspilne, is one of only two national talk radio networks, with the other being the privately owned Radio NV
(2021)" }, "Internet country code": { "text": ".ua" }, "Internet users": { "total": { "text": "40,912,381 (July 2022 est.)" }, "percent of population": { "text": "94.5% (July 2022 est.)" } }, "Broadband - fixed subscriptions": { "total": { "text": "7,769,401 (2020 est.)" }, "subscriptions per 100 inhabitants": { "text": "19 (2020 est.)" } }, "Communications - note": { "text": "a sorting code to expeditiously handle large volumes of mail was first set up in Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) in the 1930s; the sophisticated, three-part (number-letter-number) postal code system, referred to as an \"index,\" was the world's first postal zip code; the system functioned well and was in use from 1932 to 1939 when it was abruptly discontinued" } }, "Transportation": { "National air transport system": { "number of registered air carriers": { "text": "14 (2020)" }, "inventory of registered aircraft operated by air carriers": { "text": "126" }, "annual passenger traffic on registered air carriers": { "text": "7,854,842 (2018)" }, "annual freight traffic on registered air carriers": { "text": "75.26 million (2018) mt-km" } }, "Civil aircraft registration country code prefix": { "text": "UR" }, "Airports": { "total": { "text": "215 (2021)" } }, "Airports - with paved runways": { "total": { "text": "108" }, "over 3,047 m": { "text": "13" }, "2,438 to 3,047 m": { "text": "42" }, "1,524 to 2,437 m": { "text": "22" }, "914 to 1,523 m": { "text": "3" }, "under 914 m": { "text": "28 (2021)" } }, "Airports - with unpaved runways": { "total": { "text": "79" }, "1,524 to 2,437 m": { "text": "5" }, "914 to 1,523 m": { "text": "5" }, "under 914 m": { "text": "69 (2021)" } }, "Heliports": { "text": "9 (2021)" }, "Pipelines": { "text": "36,720 km gas, 4,514 km oil, 4,363 km refined products (2013)" }, "Railways": { "total": { "text": "21,733 km (2014)" }, "standard gauge": { "text": "49 km (2014) 1.435-m gauge (49 km electrified)" }, "broad gauge": { "text": "21,684 km (2014) 1.524-m gauge (9,250 km electrified)" } }, "Roadways": { "total": { "text": "169,694 km (2012)" }, "paved": { "text": "166,095 km (2012) (includes 17 km of expressways)" }, "unpaved": { "text": "3,599 km (2012)" } }, "Waterways": { "text": "1,672 km (2012) (most on Dnieper River)" }, "Merchant marine": { "total": { "text": "409" }, "by type": { "text": "bulk carrier 1, container ship 1, general cargo 84, oil tanker 15, other 308 (2021)" } }, "Ports and terminals": { "major seaport(s)": { "text": "Feodosiia, Chornomorsk, Mariupol, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Yuzhne" }, "river port(s)": { "text": "Kherson, Kyiv (Dnieper River), Mykolaiv (Pivdennyy Buh River)" } } }, "Military and Security": { "Military and security forces": { "text": "Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU; Zbroyni Syly Ukrayiny or ZSU): Ground Forces (Sukhoputni Viys’ka), Naval Forces (Viys’kovo-Mors’ki Syly, VMS), Air Forces (Povitryani Syly, PS), Air Assault Forces (Desantno-shturmovi Viyska, DShV), Ukrainian Special Operations Forces (UASOF), Territorial Defense Forces (Reserves); Ministry of Internal Affairs: National Guard of Ukraine, State Border Guard Service of Ukraine (includes Maritime Border Guard) (2022)", "note": "note 1: in the event that martial law is declared, all National Guard units, with certain exceptions such as those tasked with providing for diplomatic security of embassies and consulates, would come under the command of the Ministry of Defense as auxiliary forces to the Armed ForcesUkraine-Belarus: in 1997, Ukraine and Belarus signed a boundary delimitation treaty; the instruments of ratification were exchanged in 2013; a joint commission should be established to enable the actual demarcation to begin
Ukraine-Hungary: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are crossing the border to Hungary to escape the Russian invasion in their country
Ukraine-Moldova: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are crossing the border to Moldova to escape the Russian invasion in their country; Ukraine and Moldova signed an agreement officially delimiting their border in 1999, but the border has not been demarcated due to Moldova's difficulties with the break-away region of Transnistria; Moldova and Ukraine operate joint customs posts to monitor transit of people and commodities through Moldova's Transnistria Region, which remains under the auspices of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe-mandated peacekeeping mission comprised of Moldovan, Transnistrian, Russian, and Ukrainian troops
Ukraine-Poland: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are crossing the border to Poland to escape the Russian invasion in their country
Ukraine-Romania: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are crossing the border to Romania to escape the Russian invasion in their country, the ICJ in 2009 ruled largely in favor of Romania in its dispute submitted in 2004 over Ukrainian-administered Zmiyinyy/Serpilor (Snake) Island and Black Sea maritime boundary delimitation; Romania opposes Ukraine's reopening of a navigation canal from the Danube border through Ukraine to the Black Sea
Ukraine-Russia: the dispute over the boundary between Russia and Ukraine through the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov is suspended due to the occupation of Crimea by Russia
Ukraine-Slovakia: tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are crossing the border to Slovakia to escape the Russian invasion of their country
" }, "Refugees and internally displaced persons": { "IDPs": { "text": "1,461,700 (Russian-sponsored separatist violence in Crimea and eastern Ukraine) (2021); 5.35 million (Russian invasion), according to the UN (as of January 2023); note – the more recent invasion total may reflect some double counting, since it is impossible to determine how many of the recent IDPs may also include IDPs from the earlier Russian-sponsored violence in Crimea and eastern Ukraine
" }, "stateless persons": { "text": "36,459 (2022); note - citizens of the former USSR who were permanently resident in Ukraine were granted citizenship upon Ukraine's independence in 1991, but some missed this window of opportunity; people arriving after 1991, Crimean Tatars, ethnic Koreans, people with expired Soviet passports, and people with no documents have difficulty acquiring Ukrainian citizenship; following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, thousands of Crimean Tatars and their descendants deported from Ukraine under the STALIN regime returned to their homeland, some being stateless and others holding the citizenship of Uzbekistan or other former Soviet republics; a 1998 bilateral agreement between Ukraine and Uzbekistan simplified the process of renouncing Uzbek citizenship and obtaining Ukrainian citizenship" } }, "Illicit drugs": { "text": "a transit country for illicit drug trafficking into the European Union due to its location amidst several important trafficking routes into western Europe, ports on the Black and Azov seas, extensive river routes, and porous northern and eastern borders; South American cocaine moves through Ukrainian seaports and airports; amphetamine and methamphetamine laboratories supply the local market
" } } }