This Ukraine trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the country's geography (the Dnieper, the Carpathians, the black soil that made it Europe's breadbasket), its long history (Kyivan Rus, the Cossack Hetmanate, the Holodomor, Chernobyl, independence in 1991, the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan) and its culture, from borscht and pysanky to Taras Shevchenko, three Eurovision wins and the boxing brothers who promised their mother they would never fight each other. Questions run from easy (which river runs through Kyiv? what colours are the flag?) to hard (how deep is Arsenalna station? what did Shevchenko's freedom cost?), with the difficulty shown on each one so you can build an easy round or a hard one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ukraine is the second-largest country in Europe by area. Which country is the largest?
Russia
Ukraine covers about 603,600 square kilometres, and since Russia straddles two continents, Ukraine is the biggest country lying entirely in Europe.
Q 02Which river, the longest in Ukraine, flows through the capital Kyiv on its way to the Black Sea?
Dnieper
It runs 981 km through Ukrainian territory. Kyiv straddles both banks, and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant sits on a reservoir along it.
Q 03What is the name of Ukraine's highest peak, at 2,061 metres in the Carpathians?
Hoverla
Climbing it has become a patriotic ritual; the Crimean Mountains in the south are the country's other range.
Q 04Roughly what proportion of Ukraine's surface is covered by chernozem, the extremely fertile black earth?
About two-thirds
That soil is why the country is a major grain exporter and has been called the breadbasket of Europe.
Q 05How many countries share a land border with Ukraine?
Seven
Russia, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova. It also has 2,782 km of coast on the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
Q 06What is Ukraine's currency?
Hryvnia
Its symbol is ₴. Taras Shevchenko, the national poet, appears on the 100-hryvnia note.
Q 07After Kyiv, which is Ukraine's second-largest city?
Kharkiv
Kharkiv, in the northeast, was the capital of Soviet Ukraine until 1934. Odesa and Dnipro follow.
Q 08What was the name of the sister of Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv, Kyiv's legendary founders?
Lybid
The traditional founding date is 482 CE. Kyiv is often called the mother of Rus' cities.
Q 09Kyiv's Arsenalna station holds what distinction?
One of the deepest metro stations in the world
It lies over 100 metres below street level, and the escalator ride takes several minutes.
Q 10How tall is the Motherland Monument, the steel statue that dominates Kyiv's skyline?
102 m
In 2023 the Soviet hammer and sickle on her shield was replaced with the Ukrainian trident.
Q 11Which tree has become the emblem of Kyiv, lining the city's main street Khreshchatyk?
Chestnut
Kyiv Cake and Chicken Kiev are the city's two culinary exports.
Q 12In which year did Prince Oleg capture Kyiv, traditionally marking the start of Kyivan Rus?
882
By the 10th and 11th centuries Kyivan Rus was the largest and most powerful state in Europe.
Q 13Which ruler of Kyivan Rus (980-1015) brought Christianity to the region and put his emblem on his coins?
Volodymyr the Great
His trident, the tryzub, is the ancestor of Ukraine's modern coat of arms.
Q 21What name was given to the mass protests of 2004-05 that overturned a rigged presidential election?
The Orange Revolution
Ten years later the Euromaidan protests, also known as the Revolution of Dignity, toppled President Yanukovych.
Q 22Which peninsula was occupied and annexed from Ukraine by its eastern neighbour in 2014?
Crimea
The move followed the Euromaidan uprising and was followed by war in the Donbas and, in February 2022, a full-scale invasion.
Q 23What symbol appears in gold on the blue shield of Ukraine's coat of arms?
A trident
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.
Q 14Which Cossack leader's 1648 uprising led to the founding of the Cossack Hetmanate?
Bohdan Khmelnytsky
The Hetmanate then endured a 30-year struggle among Russia, Poland, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottomans and the Cossacks themselves, remembered as 'The Ruin'.
Q 15What does the word Holodomor mean?
Death by hunger
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.
Q 16On which day does Ukraine observe Holodomor Remembrance Day?
The fourth Saturday of November
Since 2006 the famine has been recognised as genocide by Ukraine and 33 other UN member states.
Q 17Which of the Chernobyl plant's four reactors exploded on 26 April 1986?
Number 4
It happened during a test simulating a blackout. Two engineers died in the blast and 28 more within three months from radiation sickness.
Q 18To what radius was the Chernobyl exclusion zone expanded after the initial 10 km cordon?
30 km
That expansion forced roughly 68,000 more people from their homes. A New Safe Confinement was slid over the ruined reactor in 2016-18.
Q 19Besides Chernobyl, what is the only nuclear accident rated level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale?
Fukushima
The abandoned town of Pripyat next to the plant has become an eerie tourist destination.
Q 20On what date did Ukraine declare independence from the Soviet Union in 1991?
24 August
Voters overwhelmingly confirmed it in a December referendum, and Ukraine's Flag Day is celebrated the day before, on 23 August.
Q 24Which colour forms the top half of the Ukrainian flag?
Blue
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.
Q 25Which soup did UNESCO add to its urgent-safeguarding heritage list in 2022, citing Ukraine's culture of cooking it?
Borscht
Its name comes from hogweed, the plant the original version was made from. In Ukraine it is served with pampushky, garlic-glazed yeast rolls.
Q 26What are pampushky, traditionally served alongside Ukraine's famous beetroot soup?
Garlic-glazed yeast rolls
The soup itself usually comes with a spoonful of smetana, or sour cream.
Q 27What was special about the Antonov An-225 Mriya, which first flew in Ukraine in 1988?
It was the heaviest aircraft ever
Designed to carry the Buran space shuttle, it had six engines and an 88.4-metre wingspan. Its name means 'dream' in Ukrainian.
Q 28At which airport was the sole An-225 Mriya destroyed on February 27, 2022?
Hostomel
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.
Q 29How many times had Ukraine won the Eurovision Song Contest by the end of 2025?
Three
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.
Q 30Which song won Eurovision for Kalush Orchestra in 2022?
Stefania
Ukraine could not host the following year, so Liverpool staged the 2023 contest on its behalf as the UK had finished second.