Early history from the
Pontic steppes of present-day Ukraine and Russia|left Evidence for the earliest securely dated hominin presence in Europe comes from 1.4 million-year-old stone tools from
Korolevo, in western Ukraine. Settlement by
modern humans in Ukraine and its vicinity dates back to 32,000 BC, with evidence of the
Gravettian culture in the
Crimean Mountains. By 4,500 BC, the
Neolithic Cucuteni–Trypillia culture was flourishing in wide areas of modern Ukraine, including
Trypillia and the entire
Dnieper-
Dniester region. Ukraine is a probable location for the first
domestication of the horse. The
Kurgan hypothesis places the Volga-Dnieper region of Ukraine and southern Russia as the
linguistic homeland of the
Proto-Indo-Europeans. Early
Indo-European migrations from the Pontic steppes in the 3rd millennium BC spread
Yamnaya Steppe pastoralist ancestry and
Indo-European languages across large parts of Europe. During the
Iron Age, the land was inhabited by
Iranian-speaking
Cimmerians,
Scythians, and
Sarmatians. Between 700 BC and 200 BC it was part of the
Scythian kingdom. From the 6th century BC,
Greek,
Roman, and
Byzantine colonies were established on the north-eastern shore of the
Black Sea, such as at
Tyras,
Olbia, and
Chersonesus. These thrived into the 6th century AD. The
Goths stayed in the area, but came under the sway of the
Huns from the 370s. In the 7th century, the territory that is now eastern Ukraine was the centre of
Old Great Bulgaria. At the end of the century, the majority of Bulgar tribes migrated in different directions, and the
Khazars took over much of the land. In the 5th and 6th centuries, the
Antes, which some relate as an
early Slavic people, lived in Ukraine. Migrations from the territories of present-day Ukraine throughout the
Balkans established many
South Slavic nations. Northern migrations, reaching almost to
Lake Ilmen, led to the emergence of the
Ilmen Slavs and
Krivichs. Following an
Avar raid in 602 and the collapse of the Antes Union, most of these peoples survived as separate tribes until the beginning of the second millennium.
Golden Age of Kyiv , 1054–1132 The establishment of the state of
Kievan Rus' remains obscure and uncertain. The state included much of present-day Ukraine, Belarus and the western part of
European Russia. According to the
Primary Chronicle, the
Rus' people initially consisted of
Varangians from
Scandinavia. In 882, the pagan
Prince Oleg (Oleh) conquered
Kyiv from
Askold and Dir and proclaimed it as the new capital of the Rus'.
Anti-Normanist historians however argue that the East Slavic tribes along the southern parts of the
Dnieper River were already in the process of forming a state independently. The Varangian elite, including the ruling
Rurik dynasty, later assimilated into the Slavic population. During the 10th and 11th centuries, Kievan Rus' became the largest and most powerful state in Europe, a period known as its Golden Age. It began with the reign of
Vladimir the Great (980–1015), who
introduced Christianity. During the reign of his son,
Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054), Kievan Rus' reached the zenith of its cultural development and military power. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the nomadic confederacy of the
Turkic-speaking
Cumans and
Kipchaks was the dominant force in the
Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea. The
Mongol invasions in the mid-13th century devastated Kievan Rus'; following the
Siege of Kyiv in 1240, the city was destroyed by the Mongols. In the western territories, the principalities of
Halych and
Volhynia had arisen earlier, and were merged to form the
Principality of Galicia–Volhynia.
Daniel of Galicia, son of
Roman the Great, re-united much of south-western Rus', including
Volhynia,
Galicia, as well as Kyiv. He was subsequently crowned by a
papal envoy as the first
king of Galicia–Volhynia (also known as the Kingdom of
Ruthenia) in 1253.
Foreign domination at its maximum extent in 1619, superimposed on modern borders.
Poland and the
Polish Crown exercised power over much of Ukraine after
1569. In 1349, in the aftermath of the
Galicia–Volhynia Wars, the region was partitioned between the
Kingdom of Poland and the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. From the mid-13th century to the late 1400s, the
Republic of Genoa founded numerous
colonies on the northern coast of the Black Sea and transformed these into large commercial centres headed by the consul, a representative of the Republic. In 1430, the region of
Podolia was incorporated into Poland, and the lands of modern-day Ukraine became increasingly settled by
Poles. In 1441,
Genghisid prince
Haci I Giray founded the
Crimean Khanate on the
Crimean Peninsula and the surrounding steppes; the Khanate orchestrated
Tatar slave raids. Over the next three centuries, the
Crimean slave trade would enslave an estimated two million in the region. In 1569, the
Union of Lublin established the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and most of the Ukrainian lands were transferred from Lithuania to the
Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, becoming
de jure Polish territory. Under the pressures of
Polonisation, many landed gentry of Ruthenia converted to
Catholicism and joined the circles of the
Polish nobility; others joined the newly created
Ruthenian Uniate Church.
Cossack Hetmanate Deprived of native protectors among the Ruthenian nobility, the peasants and townspeople began turning for protection to the emerging
Zaporozhian Cossacks. In the mid-17th century, a Cossack military quasi-state, the
Zaporozhian Host, was formed by
Dnieper Cossacks and Ruthenian peasants. Poland exercised little real control over this population, but found the Cossacks to be useful against the
Turks and Tatars, and at times the two were allies in
military campaigns. However, the continued harsh
enserfment of Ruthenian peasantry by Polish
szlachta (many of whom were Polonised
Ruthenian nobles) and the suppression of the Orthodox Church alienated the Cossacks.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky established an independent
Cossack state after the
1648 uprising against Poland In 1648,
Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the
largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the
Polish king, which enjoyed wide support from the local population. Khmelnytsky founded the
Cossack Hetmanate, which existed until 1764 (some sources claim until 1782). After Khmelnytsky suffered a crushing defeat at the
Battle of Berestechko in 1651, he turned to the
Russian tsar for help. In 1654, Khmelnytsky was subject to the
Pereiaslav Agreement, forming a military and political alliance with Russia that acknowledged loyalty to the Russian monarch. After his death, the Hetmanate went through a devastating 30-year war amongst Russia, Poland, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, and
Cossacks, known as "
The Ruin" (1657–1686), for control of the Cossack Hetmanate. The
Treaty of Perpetual Peace between Russia and Poland in 1686 divided the lands of the Cossack Hetmanate between them, reducing the portion over which Poland had claimed sovereignty to Ukraine west of the Dnieper river. In 1686, the
Metropolitanate of Kyiv was
annexed by the Moscow Patriarchate through a synodal letter of the
Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople Dionysius IV, thus placing the
Metropolitanate of Kyiv under the authority of
Moscow. An attempt to reverse the decline was undertaken by Cossack Hetman
Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), who ultimately defected to the
Swedes in the
Great Northern War (1700–1721) in a bid to get rid of Russian dependence, but Hetmanate's capital city
Baturyn was
sacked (1708) and they were crushed in the
Battle of Poltava (1709). After the
annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, the newly acquired lands, now called
Novorossiya, were opened up to settlement by Russians. The
tsarist autocracy established a policy of
Russification, suppressing the use of the
Ukrainian language and curtailing the Ukrainian national identity. The western part of present-day Ukraine was subsequently split between Russia and
Habsburg-ruled
Austria after the
fall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795.
19th and early 20th century in May 1920 during the
Polish–Soviet War. Following the
Peace of Riga signed on 18 March 1921, Poland took control of modern-day western Ukraine while Soviets took control of eastern and central Ukraine The 19th century saw the rise of Ukrainian nationalism. With growing urbanisation and modernisation and a cultural trend toward
romantic nationalism, a Ukrainian
intelligentsia committed to national rebirth and social justice emerged. The serf-turned-national-poet
Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861) and political theorist
Mykhailo Drahomanov (1841–1895) led the growing nationalist movement. While conditions for its development in Austrian
Galicia under the
Habsburgs were relatively lenient, the Russian part (historically known as "
Little Russia" or "South Russia") faced severe restrictions, going as far as
banning virtually all books from being published in Ukrainian in 1876. Ukraine, like the rest of the Russian Empire, joined the
Industrial Revolution later than most of Western Europe due to the maintenance of
serfdom until 1861. Other than near the newly discovered coal fields of the
Donbas, and in some larger cities such as
Odesa and Kyiv, Ukraine largely remained an agricultural and resource extraction economy. The Austrian part of Ukraine
was particularly destitute, which forced hundreds of thousands of peasants into emigration, who created the backbone of an extensive
Ukrainian diaspora in countries such as
Canada, the
United States and
Brazil. Some of the Ukrainians settled in the Far East, too. According to the
1897 census, there were 223,000 ethnic Ukrainians in
Siberia and 102,000 in
Central Asia. An additional 1.6 million emigrated to the east in the ten years after the opening of the
Trans-Siberian Railway in 1906.
Far Eastern areas with an ethnic Ukrainian population became known as
Green Ukraine. Ukraine plunged into turmoil with the beginning of
World War I, and fighting on Ukrainian soil persisted until late 1921. Initially, the Ukrainians were split between Austria-Hungary, fighting for the
Central Powers, though the vast majority served in the
Imperial Russian Army, which was part of the
Triple Entente, under Russia. As the Russian Empire collapsed, the conflict evolved into the
Ukrainian War of Independence, with Ukrainians fighting alongside, or against, the
Red,
White,
Black and
Green armies, with the Poles, Hungarians (in
Transcarpathia), and Germans also intervening at various times. An attempt to create an independent state, the left-leaning
Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR), was first announced by
Mykhailo Hrushevsky, but the period was plagued by an extremely unstable political and military environment. It was first deposed in a
coup d'état led by
Pavlo Skoropadskyi, which yielded the
Ukrainian State under the German protectorate, and the attempt to restore the UPR under the
Directorate ultimately failed as the Ukrainian army was regularly overrun by other forces. The short-lived
West Ukrainian People's Republic and
Hutsul Republic also failed to join the rest of Ukraine. The result of the conflict was a partial victory for the
Second Polish Republic, which annexed the Western Ukrainian provinces, as well as a larger-scale victory for the pro-Soviet forces, which succeeded in dislodging the remaining factions and eventually established the
Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Soviet Ukraine). Meanwhile, modern-day
Bukovina was occupied by
Romania and
Carpathian Ruthenia was admitted to
Czechoslovakia as an autonomous region. The conflict over Ukraine, a part of the broader
Russian Civil War, devastated the whole of the former Russian Empire, including eastern and central Ukraine. The fighting left over 1.5 million people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the former Russian Empire's territory.
Famine in 1921 further hit the eastern provinces.
Inter-war period , 1933.
Collectivisation of crops and their confiscation by Soviet authorities led to a major famine in Soviet Ukraine known as the
Holodomor , one of the lead figures of the
Executed Renaissance, was executed by the Soviet authorities, as many other Ukrainian intellectuals However, this approach was abandoned after Piłsudski's death in 1935, due to continued unrest among the Ukrainian population, including assassinations of Polish government officials by the
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN); with the Polish government responding by restricting rights of people who declared Ukrainian nationality. In consequence, the underground
Ukrainian nationalist and militant movement, which arose in the 1920s gained wider support. Meanwhile, the recently constituted Soviet Ukraine became one of the founding republics of the
Soviet Union. During the 1920s, under the Ukrainisation policy pursued by the national Communist leadership of
Mykola Skrypnyk, Soviet leadership at first encouraged a national renaissance in
Ukrainian culture and language.
Ukrainisation was part of the Soviet-wide policy of
Korenisation (literally
indigenisation), which was intended to promote the advancement of native peoples, their language and culture into the governance of their respective republics. Around the same time, Soviet leader
Vladimir Lenin instituted the
New Economic Policy (NEP), which introduced a form of
market socialism, allowing some private ownership of small and medium-sized productive enterprises, hoping to reconstruct the post-war Soviet Union that had been devastated by both WWI and later the civil war. The NEP was successful at restoring the formerly war-torn nation to pre-WWI levels of production and agricultural output by the mid-1920s, much of the latter based in Ukraine. These policies attracted many prominent former UNR figures, including former UNR leader Hrushevsky, to return to Soviet Ukraine, where they were accepted, and participated in the advancement of Ukrainian science and culture. In July 1922, arrests and
deportations of Ukrainian intellectuals (e.g. university professors) began in Soviet Ukraine and continued throughout the 1920s. This period was cut short when
Joseph Stalin became the leader of the USSR following Lenin's death. Stalin did away with the NEP in what became known as the
Great Break. Starting from the late 1920s and now with a
centrally planned economy, Soviet Ukraine took part in an
industrialisation scheme which quadrupled its industrial output during the 1930s. Nevertheless, Stalin sought to prevent the Ukrainians aspirations for the independence of Ukraine and took severe measures to eliminate Ukrainian peasantry and elite Ukrainian intellectuals and culturists. As a consequence of Stalin's new policy, the Ukrainian peasantry suffered from the
programme of collectivisation of agricultural crops. Collectivisation was part of the
first five-year plan and was enforced by regular troops and the secret police known as
Cheka. Those who resisted were
arrested and deported to
gulags and work camps. As members of the collective farms were sometimes not allowed to receive any grain until unrealistic quotas were met, millions starved to death in a
famine known as the
Holodomor or the "Great Famine", which was recognised by some countries as an act of
genocide perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and other Soviet notables. Following on the Russian Civil War and collectivisation, the
Great Purge, while killing Stalin's perceived political enemies, resulted in a profound loss of a new generation of Ukrainian intelligentsia, known today as the
Executed Renaissance.
World War II Following the
invasion of Poland in September 1939,
German and
Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland. Thus, Eastern Galicia and Volhynia with their Ukrainian population became part of Ukraine. For the first time in history, the nation was united. Further territorial gains were secured in 1940, when the Ukrainian SSR incorporated the northern and southern districts of
Bessarabia,
Northern Bukovina, and the
Hertsa region from the territories the USSR
forced Romania to cede, though it handed over the western part of the
Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to the newly created
Moldavian SSR. These territorial gains of the USSR were internationally recognised by the
Paris peace treaties of 1947.
German armies invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, initiating nearly four years of
total war. The
Axis initially advanced against desperate but unsuccessful efforts of the Red Army. In the
battle of Kyiv, the city was acclaimed as a "
Hero City", because of its fierce resistance. More than 600,000 Soviet soldiers (or one-quarter of the
Soviet Western Front) were killed or taken captive there, with many suffering
severe mistreatment. After its conquest, most of the Ukrainian SSR was organised within the
Reichskommissariat Ukraine, with the intention of exploiting its resources and eventual German settlement. Some western Ukrainians, who had only joined the Soviet Union in 1939, hailed the Germans as liberators, but that did not last long as the Nazis made little attempt to exploit dissatisfaction with Stalinist policies. Instead, the Nazis preserved the collective-farm system, carried out
genocidal policies against
Jews,
deported millions of people to work in Germany, and began a depopulation programme to prepare for German colonisation. Although the majority of Ukrainians fought in or alongside the Red Army and
Soviet resistance, in Western Ukraine an independent
Ukrainian Insurgent Army movement arose (UPA, 1942). It was created as the armed forces of the underground
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Both organisations, the OUN and the UPA, supported the goal of an
independent Ukrainian state on the territory with a Ukrainian ethnic majority. Although this brought conflict with Nazi Germany, at times the
Melnyk wing of the OUN allied with the Nazi forces. From mid-1943 until the end of the war, the UPA carried out
massacres of ethnic Poles in the Volhynia and
Eastern Galicia regions, killing around 100,000 Polish civilians, which brought reprisals. These organised massacres were an attempt by the OUN to create a homogeneous Ukrainian state without a Polish minority living within its borders, and to prevent the post-war Polish state from asserting its sovereignty over areas that had been part of pre-war Poland. After the war, the UPA continued to fight the USSR until the 1950s. At the same time, the
Ukrainian Liberation Army, another nationalist movement, fought alongside the Nazis. suffered significant damage during
World War II, and was occupied by the
Germans from 19 September 1941 until 6 November 1943 In total, the number of ethnic Ukrainians who fought in the ranks of the Soviet Army is estimated from 4.5 million half of the
Pro-Soviet partisan guerrilla resistance units, which counted up to 500,000 troops in 1944, were also Ukrainian. Generally, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army's figures are unreliable, with figures ranging anywhere from 15,000 to as many as 100,000 fighters. The vast majority of the fighting in World War II took place on the
Eastern Front. The
total losses inflicted upon the Ukrainian population during the war are estimated at 6 million, including an estimated one and a half million Jews killed by the
Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of local collaborators. Of the estimated 8.6 million Soviet troop losses, 1.4 million were ethnic
Ukrainians.
Post–war Soviet Ukraine ,
Nikita Khrushchev (left, pre-war
CPSU chief in Ukraine) and
Leonid Brezhnev (an engineer from
Kamianske, Ukraine) The republic was heavily damaged by the war, and it required significant efforts to recover. More than 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages were destroyed. The situation was worsened by a
famine in 1946–1947, which was caused by a drought and the wartime destruction of infrastructure, killing at least tens of thousands of people. part of a special agreement at the
Yalta Conference, and, alongside Belarus, had voting rights in the UN even though they were not independent. Moreover, Ukraine once more expanded its borders as it annexed
Zakarpattia, and the population became much more homogenised due to post-war population transfers, most of which, as in the case of
Germans and
Crimean Tatars, were forced. As of 1 January 1953, Ukrainians were second only to Russians among adult "
special deportees", comprising 20% of the total. Following the death of Stalin in 1953,
Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the USSR, who began the policies of
de-stalinisation and the
Khrushchev Thaw. During his term as head of the Soviet Union,
Crimea was
transferred from the
Russian SFSR to the
Ukrainian SSR, formally as a friendship gift to Ukraine and for economic reasons. This represented the final extension of Ukrainian territory and formed the basis for the internationally recognised borders of Ukraine to this day. Many top positions in the Soviet Union were occupied by Ukrainians, including notably
Leonid Brezhnev,
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982. However, it was he and his
appointee in Ukraine,
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, who presided over the extensive
Russification of Ukraine and who were instrumental in repressing a new generation of Ukrainian intellectuals known as the
Sixtiers. By 1950, the republic had fully surpassed pre-war levels of industry and production. Soviet Ukraine soon became a European leader in industrial production and an important centre of the Soviet
arms industry and high-tech research, though heavy industry still had an outsided influence. The Soviet government invested in hydroelectric and nuclear power projects to cater to the energy demand that the development carried. On 26 April 1986, however, a reactor in the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, resulting in the
Chernobyl disaster, the worst
nuclear reactor accident in history.
Independence and Russian president
Boris Yeltsin signing the
Belavezha Accords, which
dissolved the Soviet Union, on 8 December 1991
Mikhail Gorbachev pursued a policy of limited liberalisation of public life, known as
perestroika, and attempted to reform a
stagnating economy. The latter failed, but the democratisation of the Soviet Union fuelled nationalist and separatist tendencies among the ethnic minorities, including Ukrainians. As part of the so-called
parade of sovereignties, on 16 July 1990, the newly elected
Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted the
Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine. It was approved by 92% of the Ukrainian electorate in a
referendum on 1 December. Ukraine's new
president, Leonid Kravchuk, went on to sign the
Belavezha Accords and made Ukraine a founding member of the much looser
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), though Ukraine never became a full member of the latter as it did not ratify the agreement founding CIS. These documents sealed the fate of the Soviet Union, which formally voted itself out of existence on 26 December. Ukraine was initially viewed as having favourable economic conditions in comparison to the other regions of the Soviet Union, though it was one of the poorer Soviet republics by the time of the dissolution. However, during its transition to the market economy, the country experienced deeper economic slowdown than almost all of the other
former Soviet Republics. During the recession, between 1991 and 1999, Ukraine lost 60% of its GDP and suffered from
hyperinflation that peaked at 10,000% in 1993. The situation only stabilised well after the new currency, the
hryvnia, fell sharply in late 1998 partially as a fallout from the
Russian debt default earlier that year. The legacy of the economic policies of the nineties was the mass privatisation of state property that created a class of extremely powerful and rich individuals known as the
oligarchs. and finally, the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine by Russia on 24 February 2022. Ukraine's economy in general underperformed since the time independence came due to pervasive
corruption and mismanagement, which, particularly in the 1990s, led to protests and organised strikes. The war with Russia impeded meaningful economic recovery in the 2010s, while efforts to combat the
COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived in 2020, were made much harder by
low vaccination rates and, later in the pandemic, by the ongoing invasion. protest in Kyiv, December 2013 From the political perspective, one of the defining features of the
politics of Ukraine is that for most of the time, it has been divided along two issues: the relation between Ukraine, the
West and Russia, and the classical
left-right divide. The first two presidents, Kravchuk and
Leonid Kuchma, tended to balance the competing visions of Ukraine, though
Yushchenko and
Yanukovych were generally pro-Western and pro-Russian, respectively. There were two major protests against Yanukovych: the
Orange Revolution in 2004, when tens of thousands of people went in protest of
election rigging in his favour (Yushchenko was eventually elected president), and another one in the winter of 2013/2014, when more gathered on the
Euromaidan to oppose Yanukovych's refusal to sign the
European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. By the end of the protests on 21 February 2014, he fled from Ukraine and was removed by the parliament in what is termed the
Revolution of Dignity, but Russia refused to recognise the interim pro-Western government, calling it a
junta and denouncing the events as a coup d'état sponsored by the United States. Despite the signing of the
Budapest memorandum in 1994, in which Ukraine agreed to hand over
nuclear weapons in exchange for guarantees of security and territorial integrity, Russia reacted violently to these developments and
started a war against its western neighbour. In late February and early March 2014, it
annexed Crimea using its
Navy in
Sevastopol as well as the so- called
little green men; after this succeeded, it then launched a
proxy war in the Donbas via the breakaway
Donetsk People's Republic and
Luhansk People's Republic. The first months of the conflict with the Russian-backed separatists were fluid, but Russian forces then started an open invasion in Donbas on 24 August 2014. Together they pushed back Ukrainian troops to the frontline established in February 2015, i.e. after Ukrainian troops
withdrew from Debaltseve. It remained a
frozen conflict until the early hours of 24 February 2022, when Russia launched the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. A year later, Russian troops controlled about 17% of Ukraine's internationally recognised territory, which constitutes 94% of
Luhansk Oblast, 73% of
Kherson Oblast, 72% of
Zaporizhzhia Oblast, 54% of
Donetsk Oblast and all of Crimea, though Russia failed with its initial plan, with Ukrainian troops recapturing some territory in counteroffensives. as of 28 February 2026 The military conflict with Russia shifted the government's policy towards the West. Shortly after Yanukovych fled Ukraine, the country signed the EU association agreement in June 2014, and its citizens were granted visa-free travel to the European Union three years later. In January 2019, the
Orthodox Church of Ukraine was recognised as independent of Moscow, which reversed the 1686 decision of the patriarch of Constantinople and dealt a further blow to Moscow's influence in Ukraine. Finally, amid a full-scale war with Russia, Ukraine was granted
candidate status to the European Union on 23 June 2022. A broad anti-corruption drive began in early 2023 with the resignations of several deputy ministers and regional heads during a reshuffle of the government. == Geography ==