50 Fun Facts About Ukraine

Which shallow sea, joined to the Black Sea by the Kerch Strait, washes Ukraine's south-eastern coast?

Sea of Azov. It is the shallowest sea in the world, nowhere more than about 14 metres deep, because the Don and Kuban rivers keep filling it with silt.

Which river, the longest in Ukraine, flows through the capital Kyiv on its way to the Black Sea?

Dnieper. For centuries its rapids stopped boats from sailing its full length, until a giant hydroelectric dam drowned them under a reservoir.

Hoverla, Ukraine's highest peak at 2,061 metres, rises in which mountain range?

The Carpathians. Ukrainians climb Hoverla in mass ascents every year, and the crowds leave its high meadows trampled and strewn with litter.

Chernozem, the rich soil covering about two-thirds of Ukraine, takes its name from which colour?

Black. The word is Russian for 'black earth': dark with humus, it is among the most fertile soils on the planet, and the reason Ukraine is called the breadbasket of Europe.

Which of Ukraine's seven land neighbours lies directly to its north?

Belarus. The frontier runs just north of Chernobyl, so in 1986 the wind carried much of the fallout straight across it.

What is Ukraine's currency?

Hryvnia. Named after a weight of silver that served as money in medieval Kyivan Rus, it replaced the karbovanets a few years after independence at a rate of 100,000 to one.

After Kyiv, which is Ukraine's second-largest city?

Kharkiv. The Bolsheviks made it, not Kyiv, the first capital of Soviet Ukraine, and the government only moved to Kyiv in 1934.

Which Christmas favourite began life as 'Shchedryk', a Ukrainian New Year song arranged by Mykola Leontovych?

Carol of the Bells. The original has no bells in it: it is about a swallow promising a household a prosperous spring, and the bells arrived with Peter Wilhousky's English words in 1936.

Kyiv's Arsenalna metro station ranks among the world's what?

Deepest. Its platforms lie about 105 metres below the street, and in 2022 Kyivans took shelter there from Russian bombs and missiles.

Which Soviet emblem was removed from the shield of Kyiv's 102-metre Motherland statue in 2023?

The hammer and sickle. Ukraine's own coat of arms took its place, turning a steel giant built to mark Soviet victory in 1945 into an emblem of resistance to Moscow.

Which tree has become the emblem of Kyiv, lining the city's main street Khreshchatyk?

Chestnut. Soviet Kyiv made the chestnut the centrepiece of the coat of arms it adopted in 1969; in 1995 the city dropped that design and restored its old emblem, the Archangel Michael.

Which prince, by the chronicle's account, seized Kyiv in 882 and made it the capital of Kyivan Rus?

Oleg. He is said to have tricked and killed the city's rulers, Askold and Dir, and then declared that Kyiv would be 'the mother of Rus cities'.

Which ruler of Kyivan Rus (980-1015) brought Christianity to the region and put his emblem on his coins?

Volodymyr the Great. He agreed to be baptised as the price of marrying a Byzantine emperor's sister, then had Kyiv's pagan idols thrown into the river.

Which Cossack leader's 1648 uprising led to the founding of the Cossack Hetmanate?

Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Needing an ally against Poland, he turned to Moscow and in 1654 had his Cossacks swear an oath of allegiance to the tsar.

What does the word Holodomor mean?

Death by hunger. The word joins holod, hunger, and mor, extermination: in the famine of 1932-33 whole villages were blacklisted from receiving food and peasants were forbidden to leave the republic to look for any.

On Holodomor Remembrance Day, the fourth Saturday of November, what do Ukrainians place in their windows?

A lit candle. The custom was the idea of James Mace, an American historian who settled in Kyiv and urged every household to light one in its window.

What was under way at Chernobyl's reactor 4 when it exploded in 1986?

A safety test. To run it, technicians had shut down the emergency safety systems and pulled most of the control rods out of the core, and the reactor ran out of control.

Which town, built to house Chernobyl's workers, was evacuated the day after the 1986 explosion and never resettled?

Pripyat. It stands empty inside the 30-kilometre exclusion zone, and a new town, Slavutych, was built outside it for the plant's workers.

As of 2025, what is the only nuclear accident besides Chernobyl rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale?

Fukushima. In 2011 an earthquake and tsunami cut the Japanese plant's power, the cooling failed in three reactors and their cores overheated.

Ukraine declared independence on 24 August 1991, days after which event in Moscow?

A failed coup. Days after the hardliners' putsch collapsed, parliament voted for independence almost unanimously, and on 1 December about 90 per cent of voters endorsed the decision in a referendum.

What name was given to Ukraine's mass protests of 2004-05, which overturned a rigged presidential election?

The Orange Revolution. Orange was the campaign colour of Viktor Yushchenko, whose supporters filled central Kyiv until the Supreme Court ordered a rerun, which he won.

Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, had been transferred from Soviet Russia to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 under which leader?

Nikita Khrushchev. The handover was presented as marking 300 years since the Pereiaslav agreement bound the Cossacks to the tsar, at a time when the border was an internal Soviet line.

What symbol appears in gold on the blue shield of Ukraine's coat of arms?

A trident. Known as the tryzub, it goes back to the princes of medieval Kyiv, and in 2023 it replaced the Soviet emblem on the shield of the capital's giant Motherland statue.

Which colour forms the top half of the Ukrainian flag?

Blue. The flag was banned under Soviet rule, when Ukraine flew a red banner instead; restored at independence, it is read as blue sky over golden wheat fields.

Which soup did UNESCO add to its urgent-safeguarding heritage list in 2022, citing Ukraine's culture of cooking it?

Borscht. The name is thought to come from hogweed, the wild plant the soup was made from before beetroot took over; the listing came months after the 2022 invasion.

What are pampushky, traditionally served in Ukraine alongside a bowl of soup?

Garlic-glazed yeast rolls. At Christmas the same name goes sweet: pampushky are then doughnuts filled with jam or poppy seeds.

The Antonov An-225 Mriya, the heaviest aircraft ever built, was designed to carry which Soviet spacecraft on its back?

Buran. When the Soviet shuttle programme ended the one-off giant was mothballed, then refurbished to haul loads no other aircraft could lift.

At which airport was the only An-225 Mriya destroyed in the first days of the 2022 invasion?

Hostomel. The Antonov company's own airfield was attacked within hours of the invasion beginning, and in 2022 Ukraine announced plans to complete a second, unfinished airframe.

Jamala's '1944', Ukraine's 2016 Eurovision winner, is about Stalin's deportation of which people?

Crimean Tatars. In May 1944 the entire people was deported to Central Asia and the Urals; Jamala is of Crimean Tatar descent and sings the chorus in the language.

Which song won Eurovision for Kalush Orchestra in 2022?

Stefania. Frontman Oleh Psiuk wrote it as a tribute to his mother; with Ukraine unable to host in wartime, runner-up Britain staged the 2023 contest in Liverpool.

Which drag act finished second for Ukraine at Eurovision 2007 with 'Dancing Lasha Tumbai'?

Verka Serduchka. Comedian Andriy Danylko created her in the early 1990s, and she became a star as the sleeping-car attendant hosting a TV talk show named after the carriage.

Which ex-heavyweight champion, nicknamed Dr. Ironfist, became mayor of Kyiv in 2014?

Vitali Klitschko. The 'Dr.' is real, a doctorate in sports science; he lost two races for mayor before winning, at the head of a party whose initials, UDAR, spell 'punch'.

From which condition did friends buy Ukraine's national poet, Taras Shevchenko, his freedom in 1838?

Serfdom. The painter Karl Briullov raffled a portrait to raise the 2,500 roubles his owner demanded; nine years later the tsar sent Shevchenko into army exile, forbidden to write or paint.

What was the title of Taras Shevchenko's 1840 debut poetry collection?

Kobzar. The title means a wandering bard, and it stuck to its author: Ukrainians have called Shevchenko himself 'the Kobzar' ever since.

How are traditional Ukrainian pysanky Easter eggs decorated?

With a wax-resist method using a stylus. Wax shields each colour from the next dye bath; Ukrainian Canadians built a giant pysanka at Vegreville, Alberta, for the Mounties' centenary in 1975.

Which Ukrainian nuclear plant, seized by Russian forces in March 2022, is the largest in Europe?

Zaporizhzhia. It went on producing power under occupation for six months, until its last working reactor was shut down in September 2022 amid shelling that kept cutting its power lines.

The reservoir behind which dam, breached in 2023, cooled Europe's largest nuclear plant?

Kakhovka. The breach of June 2023 emptied the reservoir, flooded the valley downstream and put the long-term water supply of the plant's six reactors in doubt.

Which city's coat of arms, a golden lion, is said to be the source of the Ukrainian flag's colours?

Lviv. Revolutionaries first raised the two colours there in 1848, when the city was an Austrian provincial capital known as Lemberg.

In which ravine on the edge of Kyiv did Nazi forces shoot more than 33,000 Jews over two days in September 1941?

Babyn Yar. The killing there went on until the Germans lost Kyiv in 1943, and took Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians as well.

What is Ukraine's parliament, which adopted the 1996 constitution, called?

Verkhovna Rada. The name means Supreme Council; it passed the constitution in an overnight sitting rather than let the president put his own draft to a referendum.

Which Eisenstein film made Odesa's great staircase world-famous?

Battleship Potemkin. Its scene of a pram careering down the steps is among the most famous in cinema, and in 1955 the staircase was renamed after the film's mutinous warship.

In which athletics event did Ukraine's Sergey Bubka break the world record 35 times?

Pole vault. He was the first man over six metres and, paid a bonus for every new record, he made a habit of raising the bar a single centimetre at a time.

Which Kyiv monastery, now a World Heritage Site, began in the 11th century as a community of monks living in caves?

Pechersk Lavra. Pechersk comes from the Ukrainian word for cave; the monk Anthony settled in one on the hillside, and the monastery grew up around the followers he drew.

In the sitcom Servant of the People, Zelenskyy's character held which job before becoming president?

High-school history teacher. A pupil secretly films his rant against corruption, the clip goes viral and he is elected; in 2019 Zelenskyy won the real presidency for a party named after the show.

Which Ukrainian striker won the 2004 Ballon d'Or while playing for AC Milan?

Andriy Shevchenko. The year before, his penalty had won Milan the Champions League final; he was the third Ukrainian to take the award, after Oleg Blokhin and Igor Belanov.

Which energetic folk dance is popularly called the National Dance of Ukraine?

Hopak. It started as a men-only dance among the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and was later opened to couples and mixed ensembles and worked into operas and ballets.

The mass protests on Kyiv's Maidan began in November 2013 after the government refused to sign a deal with whom?

The European Union. President Yanukovych shelved the association agreement days before he was due to sign it, and after three months of protest on the square he was removed from office.

Which mark keeps Ukrainian consonants hard without being a letter?

Apostrophe. It is compulsory in spelling yet sits outside the alphabet's 33 letters; the soft sign, by contrast, is a full letter, and until a 1990 reform stood last in the alphabet.

On Vyshyvanka Day, the third Thursday of May, what do Ukrainians wear to work and school?

Embroidered shirts. A Chernivtsi University student suggested the day to her classmates in 2006; it is not a public holiday, so the shirts turn up in lecture halls and offices.

A 1794 decree by which empress established the Black Sea port that became Odesa?

Catherine II. The site was an Ottoman fortress town, Khadjibey, won in her war with Turkey; a year after the decree the new port was renamed Odessa.