|RNational holiday:|N Independence Day, August 24.
|RNature and climate:|N Mainly plains with very fertile soil at below 200 m.a.s.l.
In the west a part of the Carpathian Mountains reaching 2607 m.a.s.l. and in the southern Crimean peninsula mountains reaching 1595 m.a.s.l.
Average temperature in January -5°C, on Crim 0°C, and in July +20°C.
Percipitation 500 mm and on Crim 1000 mm.
|RPeople:|N 73% Ukrainean, 22% Russian.
|REconomy:|N The very fertile soil of Ukraine is the base for an extensive and effective agricultural industry.
Most important crops are wheat, sugarbeets, cotton, flax, tobacco, soya, fruits and vegetables.
Ukraine also have rich mineral resources such as coal, iron ore, manganese, lignite, mercury, oil and natural gas.
These minerals are the base for an extensive industry ranging from textiles, households goods, to heavy steelworks and manufacturing of locomotives, train equipment and a large chemical industry.
|RHistory:|N Trypilian people lived and flourished along the Dnipro River from 6000 to 1000 BC. Slavic tribes immigrated before the first century AD and the princes of Kiev in the 9th century AD founded a strong and prosperous state called Kievian Rus, the original Russian state.
The decline started when Iaroslav the Wise died 1054. In the 13th century Ukraine absorbed much of the Mongolian invasions but was so weakened that it finally was divided mainly between Russia and Poland.
A Ukrainian Cossack State was founded in the late 16th century and fought numerous wars of liberation against Russia, Poland and Turkey, but by the late 18th century all free areas were lost and the area divided between Russia, Poland and Austria-Hungary.
Strong national movements were founded by 1850 and when the Russian Empire fell in 1917 an independent Ukrainian National Republic was proclaimed. In a few months the Red Army occupied this newborn country. This caused a civil war that did not end until 1921 when the area once again was divided between the neighbouring countries, this time between Russia, Poland, Czeckoslovakia and Romania. The Russian parts became the Ukrainian SSR, one of the original members of the USSR.
In the early 1930:s Russia engineered a man-made famine in eastern Ukraine causing the death of up to ten million Ukraineans, and furthermore the terror of Stalin hit Ukraine hard.
In World War II Ukraine was devastated and millions Ukraineans were killed, but at the peace Ukraine regained areas from Romania and Poland.
In 1944 Ukraine officially became an independent country and in 1945 a member of the UN, though still a part of the USSR.
In 1954 the original Tatar land, the Crimean Peninsula, was "given" as a gift of friendship from Russia to Ukraine.
In April 1986 the world's worst nuclear disaster occurred in Chernobyl with radioactive contamination spread over vast European areas and turned international attention to the situation in Ukraine. This made it possible for several oppositional movements to grow and finally on July 1990 the parliament adopted a declaration of sovereignty. And after the attempted and failed coup in Moscow in August 1991, Ukraine proclaimed total independence on August 24.
Ukraine was a forming member of the Commonwealth of Independent States, CIS, in 1991.
Since independence there has been strong tensions between Ukraine and Russia about all the nuclear weapons in Ukraine and about the Black Sea Fleet.
Also the aboriginal Tatar people of Crim wants to separate Crim from Ukraine and form an independent country.
