Portal:Ukraine
The Ukraine Portal - Портал України
Ukraine Україна (Ukrainian) | |
|---|---|
| ISO 3166 code | UA |
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian.
Humans have inhabited Ukraine since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, it was the site of early Slavic expansion and later became a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus', which emerged in the 9th century. Kievan Rus' became the largest and most powerful realm in Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, but gradually disintegrated into rival regional powers before being destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century. The area was then contested, divided, and ruled by a variety of external powers for the next 600 years, including the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia.
The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in central Ukraine in the 17th century but was partitioned between Russia and Poland before being absorbed by the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. Ukrainian nationalism developed and, following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic was formed. The Bolsheviks consolidated control over much of the former empire and established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. In the early 1930s, millions of Ukrainians died in the Holodomor, a human-made famine. During World War II, Ukraine was occupied by Germany and endured major battles and atrocities, resulting in 7 million civilians killed, including most Ukrainian Jews.
Ukraine gained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved and declared itself neutral. A new constitution was adopted in 1996 as the country transitioned to a free market liberal democracy amid endemic corruption and a legacy of state control. The Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 ushered electoral and constitutional reforms. Resurgent political crises prompted a series of mass demonstrations in 2014 known as the Euromaidan, leading to a revolution, at the end of which Russia unilaterally occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, and pro-Russian unrest culminated in a war in Donbas with Russian-backed separatists and Russia. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. (Full article...)
In the news
- 14 February 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant drone strike
- A drone strikes the New Safe Confinement structure housing the site of the Chernobyl disaster. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy states that a Russian combat drone caused significant damage to the structure, but did not produce an increase in external radiation levels. (CNN)
- 12 February 2025 – Russo-Ukrainian War
- Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Kyiv strikes
- Russian forces launch an overnight ballistic missile attack on Kyiv, Ukraine, killing one person and injuring four others. (Reuters)
- United States and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- After holding a telephone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin, U.S. president Donald Trump says negotiations to end the war will start immediately. (CNN) (Euronews)
- 7 February 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Battle of Toretsk
- Russia says its forces have taken full control of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, after months of urban warfare. (Reuters)
- 6 February 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Attacks on civilians during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Recognized content - 
Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.
-
Chervona Ukraina (Ukrainian: "Червона Україна") was an Admiral Nakhimov-class light cruiser of the Soviet Navy assigned to the Black Sea Fleet. During World War II, she supported Soviet forces during the Sieges of Odessa and Sevastopol before being sunk at Sevastopol on 12 November 1941 by German aircraft. She was raised in 1947 and was used as a training hulk before becoming a target ship in 1950. (Full article...) -
Evdokia Reshetnik (Ukrainian: Євдокія Решетник; 1 March 1903 O.S./14 March 1903 (N. S.) – 22 October 1996) was a Ukrainian zoologist and ecologist. She was a specialist in the mole-rats and ground squirrels of Ukraine, and was the first scientist to describe the sandy blind mole-rat of southern Ukraine in 1939. She played a key role in keeping the National Museum of Natural History at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine operable in the inter-war and immediate post-war periods, in spite of arrests by both the Gestapo and Soviet authorities. She was one of the people involved in hiding specimens of the museum to prevent them being taken by the Germans. She is known for arguing that ecology, species distribution, populations, utility, and variability, should be weighed before making determinations that labeled certain animals as pests and harmful to the environment. Though she was responsible for maintaining the historiography of scientific development in Ukraine, her own legacy was lost until the twenty-first century. (Full article...)
-
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (15 April [O.S. 3 April] 1894 – 11 September 1971) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (premier) from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program and enacted reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin circle stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier.
Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil War. Under the sponsorship of Lazar Kaganovich, Khrushchev worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He originally supported Stalin's purges and approved thousands of arrests. In 1938, Stalin sent him to govern the Ukrainian SSR, and he continued the purges there. During what was known as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, serving as an intermediary between Stalin and his generals. Khrushchev was present at the defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalin's close advisers. (Full article...) -
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a 2,900-kilometer (1,800 mi) front, with the main goal of capturing territory up to a line between Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan (A-A line). The attack became the largest and costliest military offensive in history, with around 10 million combatants taking part in the opening phase and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation on 5 December 1941. It marked a major escalation of World War II, opening the Eastern Front—the largest and deadliest land theatre of war in history—and bringing the Soviet Union into the Allied powers.
The operation, code-named after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa ("red beard"), put into action Nazi Germany's ideological goals of eradicating communism and conquering the western Soviet Union to repopulate it with Germans under Generalplan Ost, which planned for the extermination of the native Slavic peoples by mass deportation to Siberia, Germanisation, enslavement, and genocide. The material targets of the invasion were the agricultural and mineral resources of territories such as Ukraine and Byelorussia and oil fields in the Caucasus. The Axis eventually captured five million Soviet Red Army troops on the Eastern Front and deliberately starved to death or otherwise killed 3.3 million prisoners of war, as well as millions of civilians. Mass shootings and gassing operations, carried out by German paramilitary death squads and collaborators, murdered over a million Soviet Jews as part of the Holocaust. In the two years leading up to the invasion, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed political and economic pacts for strategic purposes. Following the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina in July 1940, the German High Command began planning an invasion of the country, which was approved by Adolf Hitler in December. In early 1941, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, despite receiving intelligence about an imminent attack, did not order a mobilization of the Red Army, fearing that it might provoke Germany. As a result, Soviet forces were largely caught unprepared when the invasion began, with many units positioned poorly and understrength. (Full article...) -
The Bolokhovians, Bolokhoveni or Bolokhovens (Romanian: Bolohoveni; Old Slavic: Болоховци, Bolokhovtsy) were a 13th-century ethnic group that resided in the vicinity of the principalities of Galicia, Volhynia and Kiev, in the territory known as the "Bolokhovian Land" centered at the city of Bolokhov or Bolokhovo (not identified yet). Their ethnic identity is uncertain; although Romanian scholars, basing on their ethnonym identify them as Romanians (who were called Vlachs in the Middle Ages), archeological evidence and the Hypatian Chronicle (which is the only primary source that documents their history) suggest that they were a Slavic people. Their princes, or knyazes, were in constant conflict with Daniel, the prince of Galicia–Volhynia, between 1231 and 1257. After the Mongols sacked Kiev in 1240, the Bolokhovians supplied them with troops, but the Bolokhovian princes fled to Poland. The Bolokhovians disappeared after Daniel defeated them in 1257. (Full article...)
-
Stanisław Marcin Ulam (Polish: [sta'ɲiswaf 'mart͡ɕin 'ulam]; 13 April 1909 – 13 May 1984) was a Polish mathematician, nuclear physicist and computer scientist. He participated in the Manhattan Project, originated the Teller–Ulam design of thermonuclear weapons, discovered the concept of the cellular automaton, invented the Monte Carlo method of computation, and suggested nuclear pulse propulsion. In pure and applied mathematics, he proved a number of theorems and proposed several conjectures.
Born into a wealthy Polish Jewish family in Lemberg, Austria-Hungary; Ulam studied mathematics at the Lwów Polytechnic Institute, where he earned his PhD in 1933 under the supervision of Kazimierz Kuratowski and Włodzimierz Stożek. In 1935, John von Neumann, whom Ulam had met in Warsaw, invited him to come to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, for a few months. From 1936 to 1939, he spent summers in Poland and academic years at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he worked to establish important results regarding ergodic theory. On 20 August 1939, he sailed for the United States for the last time with his 17-year-old brother Adam Ulam. He became an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1940, and a United States citizen in 1941. (Full article...) -
Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle (Ukrainian: Кам'янець-Подільська фортеця; Polish: twierdza w Kamieńcu Podolskim; Lithuanian: Podolės Kameneco tvirtovė) is a former Ruthenian-Lithuanian castle and a later three-part Polish fortress located in the historic city of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine, in the historic region of Podilia in the western part of the country. Its name is attributed to the root word 'kamin', from the Slavic word for 'stone'.
Historical accounts date Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle to the early 14th century, although recent archaeological evidence has proved human existence in the area back to the 12th or 13th century. Initially built to protect the bridge connecting the city with the mainland, the castle sits on top of a peninsula carved out by the winding Smotrych River, forming a natural defense system for Kamianets-Podilskyi's historic Old Town neighborhood. (Full article...) -
In March and April 2021, prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near Russia's border with Ukraine and in Crimea, representing the largest mobilisation since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This precipitated an international crisis due to concerns over a potential invasion. Satellite imagery showed movements of armour, missiles, and heavy weaponry towards the border. The troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, though the infrastructure was left in place. A second build-up began in October 2021, this time with more soldiers and with deployments on new fronts; by December over 100,000 Russian troops were massed around Ukraine on three sides, including Belarus from the north and Crimea from the south. Despite the Russian military build-ups, Russian officials from November 2021 to 20 February 2022 repeatedly denied that Russia had plans to invade Ukraine.
The crisis was related to the War in Donbas, itself part of the Russo-Ukrainian War, ongoing since February 2014. Intercepted phone conversations of Sergey Glazyev, a top advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, disclosed the specifics of the project Novorossiya to take over not just Crimea, but also the Donbas, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, which Russia apparently aimed to annex following Crimea. The plan involved fomenting widespread unrest using pro-Russian agents on the ground, and then orchestrating uprisings that would announce rigged referendums about joining Russia, similar to the one that took place in Crimea on 16 March 2014. In December 2021, Russia advanced two draft treaties that contained requests for what it referred to as "security guarantees", including a legally binding promise that Ukraine would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a reduction in NATO troops and materiel stationed in Eastern Europe, threatening unspecified military response if those demands were not met in full. NATO rejected these requests, and the United States warned Russia of "swift and severe" economic sanctions should it further invade Ukraine. The crisis was described by many commentators as one of the most intense in Europe since the Cold War. (Full article...) -
The deportation of the Crimean Tatars (Crimean Tatar: Qırımtatar halqınıñ sürgünligi, Cyrillic: Къырымтатар халкъынынъ сюргюнлиги) or the Sürgünlik ('exile') was the ethnic cleansing and the cultural genocide of at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars that was carried out by Soviet Union authorities from 18 to 20 May 1944, supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, even Soviet Communist Party members and Red Army members, from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of several ethnicities that were subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.
The deportation began at around c. 3:00 a.m., on the early morning hours of 18 May 1944, and lasted for 2-3 days. Estimates of Crimean Tatars who lived in Crimea prior to their deportation may possibly range from 191,044 to 423,100. At least 191,044 Crimean Tatars were deported to rural Siberia, Kazakh SSR, and Uzbek SSR (parts of Central Asia), under the pretext of being punished for their collaboration with Axis powers during the occupation from 1941 to 44, although only 40,000 Crimean Tatars
collaborated, and half of them who did collaborate with the Axis Powers themselves served in the Red Army. They were deported solely because they were strongly disliked by the Stalinist regime because of their Tatar origin, their main worship of Islam, and their access to Turkey. Due to the huge lack of food, water, proper hygiene, and supplies, about 8000 Crimean Tatars died from illness during the deportation, and a further several thousand died in exile in Central Asia, from the poor conditions and from a lack of food. The Stalinists' goal was to deport all of the Crimean Tatars, as quickly as possible, which was obviously successful. It is uncertain if any Crimean Tatars stayed behind and avoided deportation to Central Asia and hid somewhere and/or lived under a false identity, or if all of them faced deportation. It is generally speculated that not even a single Crimean Tatar stayed behind after the deportation. Estimates of those who stayed behind in Crimea may range from none to 222,056/57 people, depending on the source and the estimates of those who were deported. In Central Asia, Crimean Tatars continued to be mistreated and starved while in exile by the Stalinist regime. Despite the fact that some Crimean Tatars returned back to Crimea as early as 1955/56, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gave the "special permanent residential consent" to return to Crimea and reside there permanently, most of them were not allowed to return until November 1989, when Soviet policies considered the deportation and exile a crime and relaxed enough for them to return. (Full article...) -
Thinking with Time Machine is a 2014 modification for Portal 2 developed by Ruslan "Stridemann" Rybka and published by SignHead Studio. The player controls Chell, the protagonist of the Portal series, who wields the portal gun, while the gameplay revolves around the concept of a tablet-like time machine that is also controlled by the player. The tablet allows the player to record their movement and replay the recordings, creating a double that performs the recorded tasks. Additionally, the mod allows the player to see their own legs by looking down.
The development began after the release of Portal 2. Initially released on the Mod DB website, Thinking with Time Machine went through the Steam Greenlight process, after which it was released as a free modification on Steam on April 18, 2014. The time machine concept and the ability for the player to see their own legs by looking down were commended by critics, while the lack of usage of the portal gun and the mod's short length were criticized. (Full article...) -
There are 37 populated places in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine, that have been officially granted city status (Ukrainian: місто, romanized: misto) by the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament. Settlements with more than 10,000 people are eligible for city status, although the status is typically also granted to settlements of historical or regional importance. As of 5 December 2001, the date of the first and only official census in the country since independence, the most populous city in the oblast was the regional capital, Luhansk, with a population of 463,097 people, while the least populous city was Almazna, with 5,061 people. Almazna is also the most recent settlement to receive city status, having been granted the status by the Verkhovna Rada in 1977.
From independence in 1991 to 2020, 14 cities in the oblast were designated as cities of regional significance (municipalities), which had self-government under city councils, while the oblast's remaining 23 cities were located in 18 raions (districts) as cities of district significance, which are subordinated to the governments of the raions. On 18 July 2020, an administrative reform abolished and merged the oblast's raions and cities of regional significance into eight new, expanded raions. The eight raions that make up the oblast are Alchevsk, Dovzhansk, Luhansk, Rovenky, Shchastia, Siverskodonetsk, Starobilsk, and Svatove. After the enactment of decommunization laws, nine cities within the oblast were renamed in 2016 for their former names' connection to people, places, events, and organizations associated with the Soviet Union. The renamed cities are Bokovo-Khrustalne, Dovzhansk, Holubivka, Kadiivka, Khrustalnyi, Kypuche, Petrovo-Krasnosillia, Sorokyne, and Voznesenivka, which were previously named Vakhrusheve, Sverdlovsk, Kirovsk, Stakhanov, Krasnyi Luch, Artemivsk, Petrovske, Krasnodon, and Chervonopartyzansk, respectively. In 2024, following the passage of derussification laws, the cities Molodohvardiisk, Pervomaisk, and Sievierodonetsk were de jure renamed Otamanivka, Sokolohirsk, and Siverskodonetsk, respectively. (Full article...) -
Gregory Alchevsky (Ukrainian: Алчевський Григорій Олексійович; 1866–1920) was a Ukrainian composer. Alchevsky was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire, the son of the wealthy industrialist and banker Aleksey Alchevsky, and his wife Khrystyna Alchevska, a teacher who was a prominent activist for national education in Imperial Russia. Their six children were all musically gifted.
Alchevsky graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kharkiv University in 1887 and went on to study at the Moscow Imperial Conservatory. He was the friend of several Russian composers, including Sergei Rachmaninov, Alexander Scriabin and Alexander Goldenweiser. Alchevsky was a late Romantic movement composer. His most popular works were romances and settings of folk songs, which perpetuated the use of Ukrainian folk music into the 20th century. He worked as a music teacher and a singer, activities which acted to limit his output as a composer. He wrote a symphonic poem, Alyosha Popovych, while his work Breathing Tables for Singers and their Application to the Development of the Basic Qualities of the Voice, first published in 1908, remains in print. (Full article...) -
The Caspian expeditions of the Rus' were military raids undertaken by the Rus' between the late 9th century and c. 1041 on the Caspian Sea shores, of what are nowadays Iran, Dagestan, and Azerbaijan. Initially, the Rus' appeared in Serkland in the 9th century travelling as merchants along the Volga trade route, selling furs, honey, and slaves. The first small-scale Viking raids took place in the late 9th and early 10th century. The Rus' undertook the first large-scale expedition in 913; having arrived on 500 ships, they pillaged in the Gorgan region, in the territory of present-day Iran, and more to the west, in Gilan and Mazandaran, taking slaves and goods. On their return, the northern raiders were attacked and defeated by the Khazars in the Volga Delta, and those who escaped were killed by the local tribes in the middle Volga.
During their next expedition in 943, the Rus' captured Bardha'a, the capital of Arran, in the modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan. The Rus' stayed there for several months, killing many inhabitants of the city and amassing substantial plunder. It was only an outbreak of dysentery among the Rus' that forced them to depart with their spoils. Sviatoslav, prince of Kiev, commanded the next attack, which destroyed the Khazar state in 965. Sviatoslav's campaign established the Rus's hold on the north-south trade routes, helping to alter the demographics of the region. Raids continued through the time period with the last Scandinavian attempt to reestablish the route to the Caspian Sea taking place in c. 1041 by Ingvar the Far-Travelled. (Full article...) -
Sarah Ashton-Cirillo (born 9 July 1977), formerly Sarah Cirillo and Sarah Ashton, is an American former journalist who has worked as a spokesperson for Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, in which she is a junior sergeant. A self-described "recovering political operative" from Las Vegas, Nevada, she was active in Nevada politics from 2020 to 2021, including an abortive run for Las Vegas City Council. She arrived in Ukraine in March 2022, shortly after the full-scale Russian invasion, and has variously served as a war correspondent, a representative in aid negotiations, a civilian analyst with the Ministry of Defense, and a combat medic.
Ashton-Cirillo drew national media attention in 2021 when she released records of conversations from her time working with Republican candidates, documenting efforts to recruit members of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, for a planned "Brooks Brothers Riot" (alluding to the 2000 demonstration) as part of efforts to overturn the outcome of the 2020 United States presidential election. In 2022, she leaked a text exchange with the Republican nominee for Nevada Attorney General, which became a key controversy in that election. (Full article...) -
The Vorontsov Palace: the northern entrance façade. The stone was mined locally as part of a conscious effort to blend the building with its mountainous surroundings.
The Vorontsov Palace (Ukrainian: Воронцовский дворец; Russian: Воронцовский дворец) or the Alupka Palace is a historic palace situated at the foot of the Crimean Mountains near the town of Alupka in Crimea. The Vorontsov Palace is one of the oldest and largest palaces in Crimea, and is one of the most popular tourist attractions on Crimea's southern coast.
The palace was built between 1828 and 1848 for the Russian Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov for use as his personal summer residence at a cost of 9 million roubles. It was designed in a loose interpretation of the English Renaissance revival style by English architect Edward Blore and his assistant William Hunt. The building is a hybrid of several architectural styles, but faithful to none. Among those styles are elements of Scottish Baronial, Indo-Saracenic Revival Architecture, and Gothic Revival architecture. Blore had designed many buildings in the United Kingdom, and was later particularly well known there for completing the design of Buckingham Palace in London. (Full article...)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Featured pictures
These are Featured pictures that the Wikimedia Commons community has chosen as the highest quality on the site.
-
Painting: UnknownThe Adoration of the Shepherds is a common subject in the Nativity of Jesus in art. The scene, based on the Biblical account in Luke 2, depicts shepherds as near witnesses to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, arriving soon after the actual birth. It is often combined in art with the Adoration of the Magi, in which case it is typically just referred to by the latter title. The example here comes from 17th-century Ukraine and is currently held at the Ivan Honchar Museum. -
Photo: Noodle snacksMushrooms of Armillaria hinnulea, a species of honey fungus (or "pidpenky", from Ukrainian). Honey fungi are parasitic fungi that live on trees and woody shrubs. As a forest pathogen, it can be very destructive because unlike most parasites, it does not need to moderate its growth in order to avoid killing its host, since it will continue to thrive on the dead material. Honey fungi are long lived and form some of the largest living organisms in the world, including one that covers more than 3.4 sq mi (8.8 km2) and is thousands of years old. The mushrooms are edible, but can be easily confused with poisonous Galerina species, which can grow side-by-side with Armillaria. -
Artist: William Simpson; Restoration: NativeForeignerThe 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons and 5th Dragoon Guards engage the Russians in this lithograph of the "Charge of the Heavy Brigade", a short engagement during the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. Russian cavalry had attacked the British camp, but in roughly ten minutes of fighting, they suffered 40 to 50 killed and more than 200 wounded and were forced to retreat. -
Photograph credit: Max AlpertKombat (Russian for 'battalion commander') is a black-and-white photograph by Soviet photographer Max Alpert. It depicts a Soviet military officer, armed with a TT pistol, raising his unit for an attack during World War II. This work is regarded as one of the most iconic Soviet World War II photographs, yet neither the date nor the subject is known with certainty. According to the most widely accepted version, it depicts junior politruk Aleksei Gordeyevich Yeryomenko, minutes before his death on 12 July 1942, in Voroshilovgrad Oblast, now part of Ukraine. The photograph is in the archives of RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news agency. -
Photograph: George ChernilevskyThe ChS8 is an electric mainline passenger locomotive used in Russia and Ukraine. Built between 1983 and 1989, it was developed for pulling long passenger trains (28–32 carriages) at speeds of 100 kilometres per hour (60 mph) or faster. Since 2010 Russia has switched to more energy-efficient designs, such as the EP10 and EP20. -
A map showing caesium-137 contamination in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine (in curies per square kilometer) in 1996, ten years after the Chernobyl disaster struck the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The disaster contaminated 162,160 square kilometres (62,610 sq mi) of land and is widely considered the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. -
Photograph: Anatoly ShcherbakThe Royal Kurgan is a 4th century BC kurgan (burial barrow) located near present-day Kerch, Crimea. The mound is almost 20 metres high and its base perimeter is about 250 metres. It holds a burial chamber with a square floor plan which gradually merges into the circular shape of a corbelled dome ("false vault"). It is assumed that the Royal Kurgan was the final resting place of a ruler of the Bosporan Kingdom. -
Photograph: AmakuhaThe burning of the Trade Unions Building—used as the headquarters of the Euromaidan movement—during the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, following a failed attempt by the Ukrainian police to capture the building. After the fire, the damaged building was covered with large canvas screens on two sides with the words "Glory to Ukraine" printed on them in large letters. -
Map credit: Nicolas de FerA 1691 French map of Kamianets-Podilskyi, Ukraine, depicting the city's old town neighborhood and castle, surrounded by the winding Smotrych River. It was originally part of Kievan Rus' and annexed into the First Polish Republic, but at the time of the map's creation, the city was part of the Ottoman Empire. It shortly returned to Poland and later became part of the Russian Empire with the Second Partition of Poland in 1793. -
Photo credit: Peter DuhonUkrainian fashion model Nataliya Gotsiy modeling for Cynthia Rowley, Spring 2007 New York Fashion Week. She was the winner of the Ford Supermodel of the World 2004 search. She has appeared on the cover of French Elle and Italian Marie Claire and modeled for Behnaz Sarafpour, Christian Lacroix, Diane von Furstenberg, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Dries van Noten, Gucci, Oscar de la Renta, Valentino, and Vivienne Westwood, among others. -
Artist: William Simpson; Lithographer: Edmond Morin; Restoration: NativeForeignerA tinted lithograph, titled "Embarkation of the sick at Balaklava", shows injured and ill soldiers in the Crimean War boarding boats to take them to hospital facilities. Modern nursing had its roots in the war, as war correspondents for newspapers reported the scandalous treatment of wounded soldiers in the first desperate winter, prompting the pioneering work of women such as Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole, Frances Margaret Taylor and others. -
Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin sitting together at the Yalta Conference, which took place February 4–11, 1945. The so-called "Big Three" met to discuss the re-establishment of the nations of Europe following World War II. Although a number of agreements were reached, Stalin broke his promises regarding Poland, and the Soviet Union annexed the regions of Eastern Europe it controlled, or converted them to satellite states.
_(B%26W).jpg)
Did you know (auto-generated)
- ... that Oksana Lyniv founded the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine in 2016 and conducted them in thirty concerts across ten music festivals in 2022?
- ... that the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York, founded in 1949 by immigrants, first toured Ukraine in 1990?
- ... that Vladyslav Buialskyi, a 24-year-old bass-baritone from Berdiansk, sang the State Anthem of Ukraine on the night of his debut with the Metropolitan Opera?
- ... that Ukrainians Nadia Smyrnytska, Maria Kalyuzhnaya and Maria Kovalevska joined other prisoners in committing suicide to protest against the abuse of imprisoned women in Kara katorga?
- ... that the Jihadist Burkinabè rebels' ongoing siege of Djibo has been described as a "Ukrainian death"?
- ... that Love, a sculpture by Ukrainian artist Alexander Milov, represents two wire-frame adults who appear to be alienated, but inside their bodies two children reach out to each other?
More did you know -
- ... that the Privat Group is one of the few Ukrainian companies that own industries in the United States?
- ... that the married Western Ukrainian Clergy became a hereditary caste that dominated western Ukrainian society?
- ... that according to legend, a tunnel leads from the Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle to the Khotyn Fortress which is 20 kilometres (12 mi) away?
- ... that Ukrainian naturalist, lecturer, artist and author John Lhotsky was credited as the first discoverer of gold in New South Wales?
- ... that the Khreschatyk is the main street of Ukrainian capital Kyiv on which Orange Revolution and other historical events mainly took place?
- ... that the Kryvbas economic region in Ukraine is one of the largest iron ore and steel industry centers in Europe?
Selected article -
Kharkiv, also known as Kharkov, is the second-largest city in Ukraine. Located in the northeast of the country, it is the largest city of the historic region of Sloboda Ukraine. Kharkiv is the administrative centre of Kharkiv Oblast and Kharkiv Raion. It had a population, before the Russian invasion, of 1,421,125 (2022 estimate).[1]
Kharkiv was founded in 1654 as a fortress of the Tsardom; following the transformation into the Russian Empire Kharkiv grew to become a major centre of industry, trade, and Ukrainian culture in Sloboda Ukraine. At the beginning of the 20th century the city had a predominantly Russian population, but as industrial expansion drew in further labor from the distressed countryside, and as the early Soviet regime moderated previous restrictions on Ukrainian cultural expression, Ukrainian became the largest recorded ethnicity. From December 1919 to January 1934, Kharkiv was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. (Full article...)
In the news
- 14 February 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant drone strike
- A drone strikes the New Safe Confinement structure housing the site of the Chernobyl disaster. Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy states that a Russian combat drone caused significant damage to the structure, but did not produce an increase in external radiation levels. (CNN)
- 12 February 2025 – Russo-Ukrainian War
- Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Kyiv strikes
- Russian forces launch an overnight ballistic missile attack on Kyiv, Ukraine, killing one person and injuring four others. (Reuters)
- United States and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
- After holding a telephone call with Russian president Vladimir Putin, U.S. president Donald Trump says negotiations to end the war will start immediately. (CNN) (Euronews)
- 7 February 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Battle of Toretsk
- Russia says its forces have taken full control of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, after months of urban warfare. (Reuters)
- 6 February 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Attacks on civilians during the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Selected anniversaries for February
- February 4, 1945—February 11, 1945 — Yalta Conference was held between the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union; Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin, respectively.
- February 10, 1995 — the first prototype of the Ukrainian Antonov An-70 transport aircraft crashed during a test flight in Kyiv Oblast.
- February 23, 1954 — Viktor Yushchenko, a former President of Ukraine, was born in Khoruzhivka, Sumy Oblast.
Photo gallery
-
View on the lower fortress of the Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle -
Zbarazh (Ukrainian: Збараж, Polish: Zbaraż, Yiddish: Zbarj) is a small city in the Ternopil Oblast (province) of western Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Zbarazh Raion (district), and is located in the historic region of Galicia. The major attraction of the city is the Zbarazh Castle that played a key role during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, the heroic defense of which eventually led to change of momentum and extinguishing the Cossack revolt. -
A view of Lviv Old Town from the High Castle. -
St Andrew's Church of Kyiv (1749–1854) -
-
A view of Lviv -
The Swallow's Nest is one of the Neo-Gothic châteaux fantastiques near Yalta; it was built in 1912. -
-
Trinity Church and Monastery in Chernihiv, Ukraine -
An 1691 French map of the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi, located in western Ukraine.
-
The square in front of the theater in Chernivtsi. -
-
-
Potemkin Stairs in Odesa, Ukraine. The higher perspective allows a person to see both the stairs and landings. -
Interiour view of the Pochayiv Lavra in Ukraine. -
Streets of Mukacheve in the old part of town -
A wooden bridge leads to the entrance to the Khomutovska Steppe in Donetsk Oblast.
_16.jpg)
_2007.JPG)
Related portals
Religions in Ukraine
Post Soviet states
Other countries
Topics
Categories
Select [►] to view subcategories
WikiProjects and collaborations
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus
New articles
Ukrainian editions of Wikimedia projects
Discover Wikipedia using portals
Notes
- ^ Чисельність наявного населення України на 1 січня 2022 [Number of Present Population of Ukraine, as of January 1, 2022] (PDF) (in Ukrainian and English). Kyiv: State Statistics Service of Ukraine. Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 July 2022.