Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe, bordered to the east and northeast by Russia, with its capital and largest city at Kyiv. Covering 603,628 square kilometers, it is the second largest country in Europe after Russia, and by 2026 its population was estimated at 32.3 million people. The territory's history runs from early Slavic expansion through the ninth century Kievan Rus state, centuries of foreign domination, the Cossack Hetmanate, Russian imperial rule, and a Soviet period marked by the Holodomor famine and the Second World War. Ukraine declared independence on 24 August 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved, initially declaring itself neutral, and adopted its current constitution on 28 June 1996; it operates today as a unitary semi-presidential republic under President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, with the Verkhovna Rada as its legislature. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and backed conflict in the Donbas that year, and a full scale Russian invasion launched in 2022 opened a new phase of the war that continues to shape the country.