Ukraine
POPULATION 48,396,470
EASTERN ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN 61 percent
GREEK CATHOLIC 8 percent
PROTESTANT 3 percent
ROMAN CATHOLIC 1 percent
MUSLIM 1 percent
JEWISH 0.6 percent
SLAVIC (UKRAINIAN) PAGAN 0.2 percent
HINDU, BUDDHIST, AND PRACTITIONERS OF OTHER EASTERN RELIGIONS 0.1 percent
OTHER 0.1 percent
NONAFFILIATED 25 percent
Country Overview
Introduction
Located in eastern Europe, Ukraine is one of the largest countries on the continent, both in size and population. It is bordered to the north by Belarus, to the northeast and east by Russia, to the south by the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, to the southwest by Moldova and Romania, and to the west by Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland.
Lasting from the eighth until the thirteenth century, Kievan Rus, with its capital at Kiev, was the first and most influential Ukrainian state. It lost its independence in the fourteenth century as a result of the MongolTatar invasion from the east and Polish conquests in the west. Since that time Ukraine or some parts of it have been incorporated into neighboring states—the PolishLithuanian Commonwealth, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Soviet Union. The religious policies of all these countries were quite different, and they supported different, sometimes opposite, confessional groups within Ukrainian society.
Ukrainians made a serious attempt to obtain independence in the seventeenth century under the leadership of Bohdan Khemel'nyt'skyj.
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