Facts about Ukraine
Ukraine was a founding member of GUAM (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova).
Ukraine also has a close relationship with NATO and has declared interest in eventual membership.
One of the largest film production studios in Ukraine is the Olexandr Dovzhenko Film Studios, located in Kiev.
Ukraine became an active participant in scientific space exploration and remote sensing missions.
The European Union's Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) with Ukraine went into force in 1998.
Ukraine has produced classical composer Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart, performers Vladimir Horowitz, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, and avant-garde composers Baley, Silvestrov, and Hrabovsky.
Ukraine's culture has unique art, architecture, cuisine, dance, literature, music theater, and cinema, all shaped by various eras of domination by other nations, Soviet repression, and an on-going striving for national identity.
Ukraine has a large number of political parties, many of which have tiny memberships and are unknown to the general public.
In 1999-2001, Ukraine served as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.
Ukraine is distinguished as one of the first nations to fight the Axis powers in Carpatho-Ukraine, and one that saw some of the greatest bloodshed during the war.
Left-Bank Ukraine was eventually integrated into Russia as the Cossack Hetmanate.
After the attempt failed, on August 22, 1991, the Ukrainian parliament declared Ukraine as independent democratic state.
Ukraine has consistently supported peaceful, negotiated settlements to disputes.
Ukraine depends on imports to meet about three-fourths of its annual oil and natural gas requirements.
Some claim the geographical center of Europe is near the small town of Rakhiv, in western Ukraine.
At the Belavezha Accords on December 8, followed by the Alma Ata meeting on December 21, the leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, formally dissolved the Soviet Union, and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Ukraine signed the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, reduced the army to 300,000 soldiers, and plans to convert the mostly conscript army into a professional army.
The Verkhovna Rada, a unicameral parliament of 450 seats amends the Constitution of Ukraine, drafts laws, ratifies international treaties, appoints a number of officials, and elects judges.
Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s “perestroika” economic restructuring came to Ukraine only in 1988–1989.
From at least the ninth century, the territory of present-day Ukraine was a center of medieval East Slavic civilization forming the state of Kievan Rus.
Russian, which was a de facto official language in the Soviet Union, is widely spoken, especially in eastern and southern Ukraine.
A group of members of the parliament took the case to the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, challenging the validity of the president's decree, but the court closed the case without opinion.
Outside institutions - particularly the International Monetary Fund - have encouraged Ukraine to quicken the pace and scope of reforms.
Ukraine and became independent again after the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.
The Evangelical Baptist Union of Ukraine is the largest group, with more than 300,000 members and about 3000 clergy members.
Ukraine has remnants of sophisticated architecture of the Greek and Roman colonies in the Black Sea region.
The Dnieper River is the longest, with hydroelectric dams, reservoirs, and numerous tributaries, dominating central Ukraine.
Initially, many Ukrainians received the Germans as liberators, especially in western Ukraine, that the Soviets occupied in 1939.
The International Labor Organization calculated that Ukraine's real unemployment level is 6.7 percent in 2006; with 29 percent of the population was below the poverty line in 2003.
By the end of the eighteenth century, Western Ukrainian Galicia was taken over by Austria, while the rest of Ukraine was progressively incorporated into the Russian Empire.
The latter party switched from the "Orange Coalition" with Our Ukraine, and the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc.
Ukraine's educational system has produced a high literacy rate—in 2001, 99.4 percent of the total population age 15 and over can read and write.
Ukraine has made a substantial contribution to UN peacekeeping operations since 1992.
Ukraine concluded a deal with Russia in January 2006 that almost doubled the price Ukraine pays for Russian gas, and could cost the Ukrainian economy up to $2.2-billion.
Of the numerous different sports played in Ukraine, the major code is football (soccer), in which there are five levels.
The Khazars founded the independent Khazar kingdom near the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus, which included territory in what is now eastern Ukraine, Azerbaijan, southern Russia, and Crimea.
Ukraine has an emerging free market economy that underwent major fluctuations during the 1990s, including hyperinflation and drastic falls in economic output.
After the collapse of Soviet Union, Ukraine inherited a one-million-man military force, equipped with the third largest nuclear weapon arsenal in the world.
Soviet Ukraine joined the United Nations in 1945 as one of the original members following a Western compromise with the Soviet Union, which had asked for seats for all 15 of its union republics.
Ukraine is a republic under a semi-presidential system with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
Ukraine participated in Soviet industrialization, starting from the late 1920s, and the republic's industrial output quadrupled in the 1930s.
Ukraine is subdivided into 24 oblasts (provinces) and one autonomous republic (avtonomna respublika), Crimea.
The EU Common Strategy toward Ukraine, issued in 1999, recognizes Ukraine's long-term aspirations but does not discuss association.
The 2006 parliamentary election resulted in a government formed by the "Anti-Crisis Coalition" including the Party of Regions, Communist Party, and the Socialist Party of Ukraine.
A new crater, along with a second peak, named H?ei-zan after the era name, formed halfway down the side of Mount Fuji.
Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental climate, with a more Mediterranean climate on the southern Crimean coast.
Ukraine is a regular participant in the Olympic Games, both summer and winter.
Lithuania controlled most of the Ukraine lands except for Halych and Volhynia, defeated by Poland.
At the same time he used his influence as the First Secretary of CPU, and a Politburo member for over 25 years, to advocate economic interests of Ukraine within the USSR.
From 1917 to 1922 numerous theaters appeared in Ukraine, the most prominent new figure being Les' Kurbas, the director of The Young Theatre in Kiev.
Ukraine considers Euro-Atlantic integration its primary foreign policy objective, but in practice balances its relationship with Europe and the United States with strong ties to Russia.
The first National Space Agency of Ukraine astronaut to enter space under the Ukrainian flag was Leonid Kadenyuk on May 13, 1997.
Ukraine in 2006 underwent an extensive constitutional reform that has changed the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches and their relationship to the president.
In 1992, Ukraine joined the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe—OSCE), and the North Atlantic Cooperation Council.
Being the First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukrainian SSR in 1938-1949, Khrushchev played a role in Stalin's repressions, the man-made famine in 1946-1947, and the suppression of resistance in West Ukraine.
A NATO-Ukraine Action Plan signed in 2002 led to deeper cooperation, although in 2006, the leading political parties agreed that the question of joining NATO should be answered by a national referendum.
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe, formerly a part of the Soviet Union, bordering Russia, Romania and the Black Sea.
Large areas of Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and beyond were contaminated in varying degrees.
After a brief period of independence (1917–1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukraine became one of the founding Republics of the Soviet Union in 1922.
In 1972, the First Secretary of Communist Party of Ukraine Petro Shelest lost his position, as he was seen as being "too independent" by the government in Moscow, and was replaced by Volodymyr Shcherbytsky.
Ukraine's dependence on Russia for energy supplies, and the lack of significant structural reform, has made its economy vulnerable to external shocks.
Dramatist Mykola Kulish (1892–1937) dealt with social and national conflicts in Soviet Ukraine.
The major universities are: the National Technical University of Ukraine, the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kiev, the Kharkiv Polytechnical Institute, Lviv University, Lviv Polytechnic, and Kharkiv University.
The dominant religion in Ukraine is Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which is split between three bodies: Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kiev Patriarchate, and Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.
Ukraine won a joint bid with Poland to host the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship which is the third largest sporting event in the world after the Olympics and the World Cup.
In 1989, the "People's Movement of Ukraine," known in short as Rukh was formed.
Ukraine became a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in 1991, but in 1993 it refused to endorse a draft charter strengthening political, economic, and defense ties among CIS members.