Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the northeast, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest and the Black Sea to the south. The territory of present-day Ukraine was a key center of Eastern Slavic culture known as Kievskaya Rus in the Middle Ages. For centuries the Ukrainians struggled for their own state. After some attempts of independence at the end of World War I, Ukrainian SSR was created as a Soviet republic in 1922 after the Russian Revolution of 1917. The territory of the republic was enlarged westward in the Second World War and finally, in 1954, with the Crimea transfer. Ukraine became an independent nation following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Today the capital and the largest city of Ukraine is Kiev. Ukraine's total territory is 603,700 km making it the 45th largest country in the world. The population of Ukraine 47,425,336 (2005 estimated).
