Ukraine
Capital: Kyiv (Kiev)
The Ukraine Bulletin
Weekly Brief: October 5, 2015
Top Story Russia began airstrikes in Syria on Wednesday. America’s Secretary of State John Kerry said that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad should leave power, but Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Assad should meet with the Syrian opposition to discuss a settlement to the conflict. Though Russia claimed to target the Islamic State of Iraq and the […]
Weekly Brief: April 27, 2015
Top Story American President Barack Obama acknowledged on Wednesday that an American drone strike on an al Qaeda compound along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in January killed two hostages, an American and an Italian. Mr. Obama claimed that the mistake was due to faulty intelligence, and that American officials had no reason to believe the hostages […]
Weekly Brief: April 20, 2015
Africa Al-Shabab militants drove a car loaded with explosives into a government compound in Mogadishu, Somalia, on Tuesday. After the explosion, gunmen stormed the government offices and killed at least 17 people, including eight civilians and two soldiers. Security guards and Somali special forces soldiers eventually managed to secure the building, killing five attackers.
Weekly Brief: April 13, 2015
Africa One of the gunmen responsible for the attack on Kenya’s Garissa University College last week, which killed 148 people, was the son of a Kenyan district official. He had been missing for over a year, since dropping out of law school. His father has been cooperating with authorities since reporting his son missing last […]
Weekly Brief: April 6, 2015
Top Story Parties negotiating limits on Iran’s nuclear program announced a framework agreement on Thursday, which they intend to finalize by the end of June. The talks had intensified ahead of a March 31 soft deadline for a deal. By Monday, three primary sticking points remained: the process of lifting restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after 10 years, […]
Weekly Brief: March 30, 2015
Middle East Fighting in Yemen continued to escalate this week. On Wednesday, the Houthi rebels seized an airbase as they moved closer to the city of Aden, where President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi was sheltered. By Thursday, Mr. Hadi had briefly sought shelter in Oman before moving on to Riyadh. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia led airstrikes against the Houthis in […]
Weekly Brief: March 23, 2015
Africa On Wednesday, gunmen stormed a museum in Tunis, Tunisia, killing 22 people and injuring at least 22 more. Tunisian security forces killed two attackers in the ensuing firefight, but three remained at large. No organization immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but local groups affiliated with al Qaeda are active in the country, and the […]
History
Ukraine was the center of the first eastern Slavic state, Kyivan Rus, which during the 10th and 11th centuries was the largest and most powerful state in Europe. Weakened by internecine quarrels and Mongol invasions, Kyivan Rus was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and eventually into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The cultural and religious legacy of Kyivan Rus laid the foundation for Ukrainian nationalism through subsequent centuries. A new Ukrainian state, the Cossack Hetmanate, was established during the mid-17th century after an uprising against the Poles. Despite continuous Muscovite pressure, the Hetmanate managed to remain autonomous for well over 100 years. During the latter part of the 18th century, most Ukrainian ethnographic territory was absorbed by the Russian Empire. Following the collapse of czarist Russia in 1917, Ukraine was able to achieve a short-lived period of independence (1917-20), but was reconquered and forced to endure a brutal Soviet rule that engineered two forced famines (1921-22 and 1932-33) in which over 8 million died. In World War II, German and Soviet armies were responsible for some 7 to 8 million more deaths. Although final independence for Ukraine was achieved in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, democracy and prosperity remained elusive as the legacy of state control and endemic corruption stalled efforts at economic reform, privatization, and civil liberties. A peaceful mass protest "Orange Revolution" in the closing months of 2004 forced the authorities to overturn a rigged presidential election and to allow a new internationally monitored vote that swept into power a reformist slate under Viktor YUSHCHENKO. Subsequent internal squabbles in the YUSHCHENKO camp allowed his rival Viktor YANUKOVYCH to stage a comeback in parliamentary elections and become prime minister in August of 2006. An early legislative election, brought on by a political crisis in the spring of 2007, saw Yuliya TYMOSHENKO, as head of an "Orange" coalition, installed as a new prime minister in December 2007. Viktor YANUKOVUYCH was elected president in a February 2010 run-off election that observers assessed as meeting most international standards. The following month, Ukraine's parliament, the Rada, approved a vote of no-confidence prompting Yuliya TYMOSHENKO to resign from her post as prime minister. In October 2012, Ukraine held Rada elections, widely criticized by Western observers as flawed due to use of government resources to favor ruling party candidates, interference with media access, and harassment of opposition candidates.
Geography
Metric Units
| Total Area | 603,550 sq km |
| Land Boundaries | 4,566 km |
| Border Countries | Belarus 891 km, Hungary 103 km, Moldova 940 km, Poland 428 km, Romania (south) 176 km, Romania (southwest) 362 km, Russia 1,576 km, Slovakia 90 km |
| Coastline | 2,782 km |
| Terrain | most of Ukraine consists of fertile plains (steppes) and plateaus, mountains being found only in the west (the Carpathians), and in the Crimean Peninsula in the extreme south |
| Minimum Elevation | 0 m |
| Maximum Elevation | 2,061 m |
| Climate | temperate continental; Mediterranean only on the southern Crimean coast; precipitation disproportionately distributed, highest in west and north, lesser in east and southeast; winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold farther inland; summers are warm across the greater part of the country, hot in the south |
| Natural Resources | iron ore, coal, manganese, natural gas, oil, salt, sulfur, graphite, titanium, magnesium, kaolin, nickel, mercury, timber, arable land |
| Arable Land | 53.85% |
| Permanent Crops | 1.48% |
Economy
| Gross Domestic Product | $335.4 billion |
| GDP (per capita) | $7,600 |
| GDP Growth | 0.2% |
| Unemployment Rate | 7.4% |
| Population in Poverty | 24.1% |
| GINI Index | 28.2 |
Budget & Debt
| Expenditures | $59.58 billion |
| Revenue | $53.07 billion |
| Current Account Balance | $-14.4 billion |
| External Debt | $132.4 billion |
Trade
| Exports | $69.8 billion |
| Export Items | ferrous and nonferrous metals, fuel and petroleum products, chemicals, machinery and transport equipment, food products |
| Export Partners | Russia 27%, Turkey 5.8%, Italy 4.6% (2011) |
| Imports | $90.2 billion |
| Import Items | energy, machinery and equipment, chemicals |
| Import Partners | Russia 30.5%, Germany 9%, China 8.9%, Belarus 5.5%, Poland 5.3% (2011) |
People
| Population | 44,573,205 |
| Population Growth | -0.63% |
| Ethnic Groups | Ukrainian 77.8%, Russian 17.3%, Belarusian 0.6%, Moldovan 0.5%, Crimean Tatar 0.5%, Bulgarian 0.4%, Hungarian 0.3%, Romanian 0.3%, Polish 0.3%, Jewish 0.2%, other 1.8% (2001 census) |
| Religion | Ukrainian Orthodox - Kyiv Patriarchate 50.4%, Ukrainian Orthodox - Moscow Patriarchate 26.1%, Ukrainian Greek Catholic 8%, Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox 7.2%, Roman Catholic 2.2%, Protestant 2.2%, Jewish 0.6%, other 3.2% (2006 est.) |
| Life Expectancy | 68.93 years |
| Infant Mortality | 0.85 deaths/1,000 live births |
| Maternal Mortality | -0.1 deaths/100,000 live births |
Energy
| Electricity Production | 198.1 billion kWh |
| Electricity Consumption | 175.3 billion kWh |
| From Fossil Fuels | 64.4% |
| From Nuclear | 25.4% |
| From Hydroelectric | 10% |
| From Renewable Sources | 0.1% |
