Ukraine: Regions, Cities & Travel Guide

What is Ukraine known for?

Ukraine is known as the largest country lying wholly within Europe, a Slavic nation of old cities and broad natural country. The land runs far. From the capital at Kyiv to Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro, its cultural heritage and its cities carry a reputation built over centuries in Eastern Europe, tied to the Ukrainian language spoken across the whole of it.

Where is Ukraine?

Ukraine occupies a broad stretch of Eastern Europe, the second-largest country on the continent after Russia. Its borders run long. Russia lies along the east and northeast, Belarus to the north, Poland and Slovakia to the west, and Hungary, Romania, and Moldova to the southwest, so the country meets seven neighbours across its land frontiers.

The sea closes the south. The Black Sea and the Sea of Azov wash the southern and southeastern coasts, giving the inland country its outlet to open water. Between those edges lies one of the largest expanses of open country in Europe.

Ukraine stretches from the western borderlands with Poland and Slovakia toward the Black Sea in an almost unbroken sweep of low, wide plain. The cities mark the distances. Kyiv sits in the north-centre, Kharkiv near the eastern border with Russia, Dnipro toward the centre-east, and Odesa on the southern coast, spread far apart across a country whose sheer size sets it apart in Eastern Europe.

From border to sea, the ground barely rises.

What is the history of Ukraine?

Ukraine carries a long history as a Slavic land in Eastern Europe, its cities among the older seats of the region. Kyiv leads them. The capital and its fellow cities of Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro grew over generations into the centres of a wide country, gathering the cultural heritage that the land is known for across the continent.

The modern state, known in its own language as Україна, dates its independence to 1991. That year set its present form. Yet the country it governs had long been settled, a broad Slavic land between the western borderlands and the Black Sea, and the older identity of the land runs on beneath the modern republic that carries the name Ukraine in Eastern Europe.

What is Ukraine like?

Culture in Ukraine is Slavic at its root, carried in the Ukrainian language spoken across the whole country. The language binds it together. From Kyiv in the north to Odesa on the Black Sea, the cultural heritage of the cities, their music, and their traditions marks Ukraine as one of the distinct cultures of Eastern Europe.

Beyond the cities, the culture is tied to the land itself. The country runs wide and open. Its natural areas and its broad plains shape a way of life spread across a huge territory, so the culture of Ukraine reaches from the streets of Kharkiv and Dnipro to the open country between them, held together by a shared Slavic inheritance and the Ukrainian tongue.

What is the climate of Ukraine?

Ukraine has a temperate climate, its summers warm and its winters cold across the open plains of Eastern Europe. Across Ukraine the seasons run to extremes. Distance from the moderating sea leaves the interior with a continental turn, while the southern coast along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov stays milder than the inland country around Kyiv and Kharkiv.

How do you get to Ukraine?

Most travellers reach Ukraine through Kyiv, the capital and the main point of arrival in the country's north-centre. Land routes lead in too. Ukraine shares borders with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova to the west and southwest and with Belarus and Russia to the north and east, while the Black Sea opens the south to arrivals by sea near Odesa.