Country Profile:
Official Name:
Ukraine
ISO Country Code: UA, UKR
Official language: Ukrainian
Capital: Kyiv
Independence: August, 24, 1991
Location: Central-Eastern Europe, part of the East-European plain, between 44''20' and 52''20' N and 22''5' and 41''15'E.
Area: 603 700 km2
Climate: moderately continental, except for Southern Crimea, where the climate is subtropical, of the Mediterranean type. The Carpathian climate is also mild, with warm winter and rainy summer.
Average winter temperature is from -8° to -12° C (from +17.6° F to +3° F). In the Southern regions average winter temperature is 0° C (+32° F).
Average summer temperature is from +18° to +25° C (from +64.4° F to +77° F), although maximum temperature can be more than +35° C (+95° F).
Best time to visit Ukraine: summer, late spring and early autumn.
Population: 47 732 079 (25th in the world, population density – 80 p/km2)
Currency: hryvnia (letter code UAH, digital code 980)
Time zone: GMT+2 (UTC+2)
Internet top-level domain: ua
International phone code: +380
The largest country entirely within Europe has a coastline at the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov in the southeast. Ukraine borders Russia in the northeast and east, Belarus in the northwest, Poland, and Slovakia in the west, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova to the southwest.
Ukraine's landscape consists mainly of plains and plateaus, only the Carpathian mountains in the west reach 2,061 m (6,760 ft.) at Mount Hoverla (Hora Hoverla), the highest peak in the country.
A fully independent Ukraine emerged only late in the 20th century, after long periods of successive domination by Poland-Lithuania, Russia, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). Ukraine had experienced a brief period of independence in 1918–20, but portions of western Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the period between the two World Wars, and Ukraine thereafter became part of the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (S.S.R.). When the Soviet Union began to unravel in 1990–91, the legislature of the Ukrainian S.S.R. declared sovereignty (July 16, 1990) and then outright independence (August 24, 1991), a move that was confirmed by popular approval in a plebiscite (December 1, 1991). With the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in December 1991, Ukraine gained full independence.
Political System of Ukraine
Ukraine is a semi-presidential republic. The head of state and commander-in-chief is the president. The president is elected by popular vote for a five-year term. The head of the government is the prime minister. The highest legislative unit of the Ukrainian government is the unicameral Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council of Ukraine).
Official web-site of the President of Ukraine: https://www.president.gov.ua/en
Population
When Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, a policy of Russian in-migration and Ukrainian out-migration was in effect, and ethnic Ukrainians’ share of the population in Ukraine declined from 77 percent in 1959 to 73 percent in 1991. But that trend reversed after the country gained independence, and, by the turn of the 21st century, ethnic Ukrainians made up more than three-fourths of the population. Russians continue to be the largest minority, though they now constitute less than one-fifth of the population. The remainder of the population includes Belarusians, Moldovans, Bulgarians, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Roma (Gypsies), and other groups. The Crimean Tatars, who were forcibly deported to Uzbekistan and other Central Asian republics in 1944, began returning to the Crimea in large numbers in 1989; by the early 21st century they constituted one of the largest non-Russian minority groups. In March 2014 Russia forcibly annexed Crimea, a move that was condemned by the international community, and human rights groups subsequently documented a series of repressive measures that had been taken against the Crimean Tatars by Russian authorities.