Overview

Ukraine is officially named Ukrayina, which means "borderland." After Russia, it is the second-largest country in Europe in area. It is comparable, both in population (about 52 million) and size (233,089 square miles) to France. It is bordered by the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, Moldova, and Romania to the south; Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland to the west; Belarus to the north; and Russia to the north and northeast.

Of its population, 73 percent are of Ukrainian ethnic origin. The country's official language, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, is Ukrainian. The capital city is Kiev, and the national flag has two broad horizontal bands of blue and yellow, the blue on top representing the sky and the yellow representing fields of wheat.

Although most of western Ukraine is agricultural—it is a country that has served as the "bread-basket of Europe"—there are large...