50 Fun Facts About Ukraine

Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe by area. Which country is the largest?

Ukraine covers about 603,600 square kilometres, and since Russia straddles two continents, Ukraine is the biggest country lying entirely in Europe.

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

It runs 981 km through Ukrainian territory. Kyiv straddles both banks, and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant sits on a reservoir along it.

What is the name of Ukraine's highest peak, at 2,061 metres in the Carpathians?

Climbing it has become a patriotic ritual; the Crimean Mountains in the south are the country's other range.

Roughly what proportion of Ukraine's surface is covered by chernozem, the extremely fertile black earth?

That soil is why the country is a major grain exporter and has been called the breadbasket of Europe.

How many countries share a land border with Ukraine?

Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. It also has 2,782 km of coast on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.

What is Ukraine's currency?

Its symbol is ₴. Taras Shevchenko, the national poet, appears on the 100-hryvnia note.

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

Kharkiv, in the northeast, was the capital of Soviet Ukraine until 1934. Odesa and Dnipro follow.

What was the name of the sister of Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv, Kyiv's legendary founders?

The traditional founding date is 482 CE. Kyiv is often called the mother of Rus' cities.

Kyiv's Arsenalna station holds what distinction?

It lies over 100 metres below street level, and the escalator ride takes several minutes.

How tall is the Motherland Monument, the steel statue that dominates Kyiv's skyline?

In 2023 the Soviet hammer and sickle on her shield was replaced with the Ukrainian trident.

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

Kyiv Cake and Chicken Kiev are the city's two culinary exports.

In which year did Prince Oleg capture Kyiv, traditionally marking the start of Kyivan Rus?

By the 10th and 11th centuries Kyivan Rus was the largest and most powerful state in Europe.

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

His trident, the tryzub, is the ancestor of Ukraine's modern coat of arms.

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

The Hetmanate then endured a 30-year struggle among Russia, Poland, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottomans and the Cossacks themselves, remembered as 'The Ruin'.

What does the word Holodomor mean?

The man-made famine of 1932-33 killed an estimated 3.5 to 5 million people in Soviet Ukraine and has been recognised as genocide by Ukraine and dozens of other countries.

On which day does Ukraine observe Holodomor Remembrance Day?

Since 2006 the famine has been recognised as genocide by Ukraine and 33 other UN member states.

Which of the Chernobyl plant's four reactors exploded on 26 April 1986?

It happened during a test simulating a blackout. Two engineers died in the blast and 28 more within three months from radiation sickness.

To what radius was the Chernobyl exclusion zone expanded after the initial 10 km cordon?

That expansion forced roughly 68,000 more people from their homes. A New Safe Confinement was slid over the ruined reactor in 2016-18.

Besides Chernobyl, what is the only nuclear accident rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale?

The abandoned town of Pripyat next to the plant has become an eerie tourist destination.

On what date did Ukraine declare independence from the Soviet Union in 1991?

Voters overwhelmingly confirmed it in a December referendum, and Ukraine's Flag Day is celebrated the day before, on 23 August.

What name was given to the mass protests of 2004-05 that overturned a rigged presidential election?

Ten years later the Euromaidan protests, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, toppled President Yanukovych.

Which peninsula was occupied and annexed from Ukraine by its eastern neighbour in 2014?

The move followed the Euromaidan uprising and was followed by war in the Donbas and, in February 2022, a full-scale invasion.

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

Adopted on 19 February 1992, it copies the emblem on the coins of Volodymyr the Great; historians have read it as a falcon, a bow, the Trinity or an anchor.

Which colour forms the top half of the Ukrainian flag?

The popular reading is a blue sky over golden wheat, though the colours actually descend from the arms of the medieval Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia and the golden lion of Lviv.

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

Its name comes from hogweed, the plant the original version was made from. In Ukraine it is served with pampushky, garlic-glazed yeast rolls.

What are pampushky, traditionally served alongside Ukraine's famous beetroot soup?

The soup itself usually comes with a spoonful of smetana, or sour cream.

What was special about the Antonov An-225 Mriya, which first flew in Ukraine in 1988?

Designed to carry the Buran space shuttle, it had six engines and an 88.4-metre wingspan. Its name means 'dream' in Ukrainian.

At which airport was the sole An-225 Mriya destroyed on February 27, 2022?

It was lost in the Battle of Antonov Airport at the start of the Russian invasion. Ukraine has said it intends to finish a second, partly built airframe.

How many times had Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest by the end of 2025?

Ruslana in 2004, Jamala in 2016 and Kalush Orchestra in 2022. Since semi-finals began in 2004 Ukraine qualified for every final it entered through 2025, alone among non-Big Five countries.

Which song won Eurovision for Kalush Orchestra in 2022?

Ukraine could not host the following year, so Liverpool staged the 2023 contest on its behalf as the UK had finished second.

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

The silver-clad, star-hatted creation of comedian Andriy Danylko also picked up the Press Award that year.

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

He holds a PhD in sports science. He and his brother Wladimir, also a heavyweight champion, promised their mother they would never fight each other, and they never did.

How much did it cost to buy Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's national poet, out of serfdom in 1838?

The painter Karl Briullov raffled a portrait to raise it. Shevchenko's 1840 collection Kobzar sold out, and Tsar Nicholas I later exiled him with orders that he be forbidden to write or paint.

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

A kobzar is a wandering bard who plays the kobza or bandura. Shevchenko was reburied at Kaniv, above the Dnieper, as he had wished.

How are traditional Ukrainian pysanky Easter eggs decorated?

The name comes from pysaty, 'to write', because the design is written on in beeswax with a kistka. Ukrainian Canadians built a giant one in Vegreville, Alberta.

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

Its six reactors near Enerhodar produced about a fifth of Ukraine's electricity before the occupation.

How many reactors does Europe's largest nuclear power plant, near Enerhodar, have?

They are Soviet-built VVER-1000 units of 950 megawatts each, commissioned between 1985 and 1996.

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

The blue and yellow was raised in Lviv during the revolutions of 1848 and again by the independence movements of 1917-21 before Soviet suppression.

How many Ukrainian civilians are estimated to have been killed during the Second World War?

That total included most of Ukraine's Jewish population. The country was fought over twice as the front moved east and then west.

In which year did Ukraine adopt its post-Soviet constitution?

Ukraine is a semi-presidential republic; it applied to join both the EU and NATO in 2022.

How many steps do Odesa's Potemkin Stairs have, after eight were buried by port works?

The staircase is built as an optical illusion: the bottom step is 21.7 m wide and the top only 12.5 m, so from below it looks far longer than it is.

How many times did Luhansk-born pole vaulter Sergey Bubka break the world record?

Seventeen came outdoors and eighteen indoors, and a Nike contract paid him a bonus for every new mark, so he often raised the bar by a single centimetre at a time.

Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, a World Heritage Site founded in 1051, began as what kind of religious house?

Its name comes from pechery, the caves where the monk Anthony first settled; its 1620s printing house was among the earliest in Ukraine.

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

The show ran for three seasons from 2015 to 2019, and the real party that carried him to office borrowed its name.

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

He was the third Ukrainian to win it and later captained the country at its first World Cup in 2006.

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

It grew out of a men's social dance of the Zaporozhian Sich in the 16th century and is now danced by mixed ensembles with famous leaps and squat kicks.

The Euromaidan protests began in 2013 after the government refused to sign a deal with whom?

The protests started on 21 November 2013 in Kyiv's Independence Square and grew into the Revolution of Dignity that toppled Viktor Yanukovych.

How many letters does the modern Ukrainian alphabet contain?

The apostrophe is mandatory in writing but is not counted as a letter, and the soft sign was officially the last letter from 1932 to 1990.

On which day is Vyshyvanka Day, when Ukrainians wear embroidered shirts, celebrated?

It began in 2006 as a student flash mob at Chernivtsi National University and is deliberately not tied to any public or religious holiday.

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

The city took its name in 1795 from the ancient Greek colony of Odessos, and by the 19th century it was the fourth-largest city in the Russian Empire.