A country located in eastern Europe, the second largest on the continent after Rusia. The capital is Kyiv, located near the Dnieper River in north-central Ukraine. (Courtesy : Encyclopedia Britannica)
A fully independent Ukraine emerged only late in the 20th century, after long periods of successive domination by Poland – Lithuania, Russia, and the USSR. Ukraine had experienced a brief period of independence in 1918–20, but portions of western Ukraine were ruled by Poland, Chechoslovakia, and Rusia 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 Ukrainian S.S.R. declared sovereignty in 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. The country changed its official name to Ukraine, and it helped to found the CIS Commonwealth of Independent States.
People of Ukraine
When Ukraine was a part of the USSR, a policy of Russian in-migration and Ukranian 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 became one of the largest non-Russian minority groups.
In 2014 Rusia 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.
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