Ukraine is a country in the south part of Central Europe. The territory of Ukraine is the largest in Europe. Its history spans more than a thousand years.
Ukraine regained independence in 1991 and now it has its own territory, government, national emblem, flag and anthem.
The capital is Kyiv.
Climate
The climate of the country is moderate. Winter is rather mild, with no severe frosts but with regular snowfalls everywhere except the south. The rivers and lakes freeze in winter. The average winter temperature varies - 3-5 Centigrade. Summer is quite hot and dry, with occasional showers and thunderstorms. The fertile black soil is well watered in spring and autumn and gets plenty of sunshine in summer.
Physical geography
It borders on Russia, Byelorussia, Moldova, Slovakia, Roumania, Hungary and Poland on land and Russia, Georgia, Bulgaria, Roumania and Turkey on sea.
Ukraine occupies an area of 233,100 square miles (603,700 square km) and its population is about 50,000,000.
Ukraine consists almost entirely of level plains and occupies a large portion of the East European Plain. Other lowlands extend along the shores of the Black and Azov seas in southern Ukraine, while the Crimean Peninsula, in the extreme south, has both lowlands and low mountains. Western Ukraine has some uplands, and the Carpathian Mountains extend through that region for more than 150 miles (240 km). The main Ukrainian river is the Dniepro. It is extensively dammed along much of its course for hydroelectric and irrigation purposes. Dnipro is one of the longest European rivers.
Population
Ethnic Ukrainians make up more than seven-tenths of the total population of about fifty million people. The Ukrainian language is related to Russian and Belarussian and belongs to the Slavic group of languages.
Russians are the largest minority group, accounting for about two-tenths of the population. Other ethnic minorities of varying sizes are Belarussian, Moldavians, Poles, Bulgarians, Jews, Greeks, Tartars, and others. The highest population densities are found in the industrialized Donets Basin and Dnipro Bend regions and in the agriculturally productive forest-steppe belt.
Industries and agriculture
Due to favorable climatic conditions, Ukraine is traditionally an agricultural area. The belt of mixed forest and steppe running west-east across south-central Ukraine has rich black soils whose intense cultivation has made the country a major producer of winter wheat and sugar beets. Ukraine is one of the world's main centers of sugar production. It produces sugar both for her own needs and for export. Other crops include sunflower seeds, corn (maize), potatoes, grapes, oats, rye, millet, and buckwheat. Fruits and vegetables are grown on the outskirts of cities, and cattle and pigs are raised throughout the country.
Ukraine has rich reserves of iron ore, bituminous and an thracite coals, and manganese-bearing ores located in close proximity to each other. This region, in east-central Ukraine, is the industrial heartland of the country and one of the majors heavy-industrial and mining-metallurgical complexes of Europe. Ukraine also produces natural gas and petroleum, though reserves of these fuels were much depleted during the Soviet period.
It has developed a varied industry, concentrated mostly in and around big cities, such as Kiev, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Dnyeprodzerzhinsk, Odessa, Kharkov, Lviv, Nickolayev and other. It produces planes and ships, lorries and buses, motorcars and locomotives, computer and electronic equipment, precision instruments and agricultural machines, TV and radioset, chemicals and textiles and various consumer goods. Odessa, Sebastopol, Nickolayev, Kherson and Kerch are main ukrainian ports.
Besides its basic mining industries, Ukraine has ferrous-metals industries that produce iron and steel in large quantities. The chemical industry produces large amounts of sulphuric acid and mineral fertilizers. Ukraine's food-processing industries yield a wide spectrum of all kinds of food of good quality.
Political system
Ukraine's political system underwent rapid changes in the early 1990s after the country gained its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in late 1991. Ukraine's parliament is called the Verkhovna Rada (Supreme Council), whose members (People's Deputies) are chosen to four-year terms in free, multicandidate elections. The chief executive of Ukraine is the president, who is also chosen in free elections. The day-to-day administration of the government rests in the hands of the prime minister, who heads the Cabinet of Ministers and is chosen by the president with parliamentary approval.
Education
Illiteracy was virtually eliminated in the first half of the twentieth century, and secondary education is compulsory. Technical schools provide specialized education in many fields and higher education is gained at numerous universities, granting bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees. Liberal arts and a wide scope of scientific and technical subjects are taught at a very high level.
Culture
A millennium of cultural development has created a wide spectrum of spiritual achievements. Splendid architectural landmarks, very rich folk art, music, a network of drama and music theatres, art schools, thousands of artists creating in all possible styles attest to a high level of cultural development despite all political and economic upheavals.
Sports
Dynamo Kyiv is a leading soccer club in Ukraine, well known in Europe for its remarkable victories over many grandees of European football. Ukrainian boxers successfully compete at the world's professional boxing level. Ukrainian national teams and individual athletes win gold, silver and bronze at the Olympic games and at world and European championships.
Some historical facts
Among the Slavs' earliest settlements was that of the name of Kyiv along the Dnipro River. The state known as Kyivan Rus-Ukraine arose in late 9th century. The Kyivan Rus-Ukraine reached its zenith in the 10th and 11th centuries under the rulers Volodymyr I (St. Vladimir) and his son Yaroslav I (Yaroslav the Wise). Volodymyr adopted Christianity as the official religion of his realm about AD 888.
Christianity gave the eastern Slavic peoples their first written language, called Church Slavonic and Kyiv became eastern Europe's chief political and cultural centre. The 12th and 13th centuries saw the decline of Kyiv owing to internal dissension, struggles with the invading nomads. The Mongol conquest in the mid-13th century decisively ended Kyivan power, but a Ukrainian principality in western Ukraine that had emerged about 1200 continued into the 14th century.
In the 14th century Lithuania annexed most Ukrainian lands except for the Galician principality, which passed to the kingdom of Poland; and in the meantime southern Ukraine remained under the control of the Tartars. After the Union of Lublin in 1569, rule over Ukraine was transferred from Lithuania to Poland. Religious dissent and social strife between the Ukrainians and their Polish overlords were augmented by the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who were in fact a class of free warriors. From their stronghold along the lower Dnipro River, the Cossacks in 1648, led by their Hetman (military leader) Bohdan Khmelnytsky, rose against the Poles and formed a semi-independent, if short-lived, state. Khmelnytsky's need for help against the Poles led to an agreement with the Muscovite tsar in 1654.
In the late 18th-century the Russian Empire obtained the Ukrainian lands west of the Dnipro, except for Galicia, which went to Austria. A Ukrainian nationalist movement developed in the 19th century, but in Russian-held Ukraine the movement faced political repression and restrictions against the Ukrainian language. After the Russian Revolution of February 1917, Ukrainian and Bolshevik forces struggled for control of Ukraine until 1921, when the Soviet government emerged victorious.
Beginning in the 1930s, the Soviet government under Joseph Stalin carried out by brutal force a policy of rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine. This policy met with peasant resistance, which in turn prompted the confiscation of grain from Ukrainian farmers by Soviet authorities, with the result that a famine in the early 1930s took an estimated five million lives.
Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union (1941) brought devastation to Ukraine and enormous suffering to its population. A major reconstruction effort after the defeat of the Nazis restored the country's economy to its pre-war level in a short time.
After the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms in the late 1980s, Ukrainian nationalist feelings gradually awoke, leading the newly democratized Ukrainian parliament to declare the republic's sovereignty in 1991.
Ternopil
Ternopil, an ancient picturesque city, lies on the banks of the quiet river Seret. It is one of the administrative, economic and cultural centres of Halychyna and it is called the capital of Halytske Podillya.
The city attracts by the combination of its new and old architecture. Ancient architectural buildings harmoniously combine with new multi-storeyed blocks of flats and industrial buildings, wide avenues, straight streets and spacious squares. Smart houses along quiet streets with multicoloured flowers, bushes and fruit trees, tender islands of squares, shady parks and a wonderful lake in the very centre of the city create the atmosphere of peace and quiet comfort. Ternopil is called the Garden City.
The city is famous for its cultural traditions.
Such great people as folklorist Volodymyr Hnatiuk, singer Solomia Krushelnytska, composer Denis Sichynsky, producer Les Kurbas connected their lives with Ternopil. Famous writer Yulian Opilsky, composer Vasyl Barvinsky, scientists Stanislav Dnistriansky and Alexander Briukner were born here. The city was often visited by writers Ivan Franko, Vasyl Stefanyk, Les Martovych, lumenaries of the Ukrainian theatre Marko Kropyvnytsky, Maria Zankovetska, Mykola Sadovsky, composer Mykola Lysenko.
Ternopil is a student city. Some tens of thousand of students study at its universities, academies, technical schools, colleges. Tidy and elegant buidings of the I.Y.Horbachevsky Ternopil State Medical University are located in the city centre.
