Ukraine 🇺🇦

Ukraine lies in Eastern Europe, part of Europe. The short and official forms of the name are the same. Kyiv is the capital.

By land area it covers 603,500 km², which ranks it 46th of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind South Sudan and just ahead of Madagascar. That makes it a little larger than Kenya.

Around 37.9 million people live there, placing it 41st of 249 by population — between Angola above it and Poland below. Measured only against its own subregion, it is 2nd of 4 in size and 2nd in population.

Plotted on a globe it falls at 49.0° north, 32.0° east, which puts it in the northern hemisphere, roughly 5,455 km from the equator, in what geographers would call temperate latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Kazakhstan — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

7 countries share a land border with it: Belarus, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovakia. The largest of them by area is Russia, which is also the most populous. Together those neighbours hold about 225.7 million people.

With both a coast and land borders, it has the trade options a landlocked country does not.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 63 people per square kilometre, which makes it less crowded than the typical entry on this list. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

The demonym is Ukrainian, so residents are Ukrainians.

The one official language is Ukrainian. No other entry in this dataset lists Ukrainian, so on this list it stands alone.

Inside Europe it places 7th of 53 by population, and it accounts for 20% of everyone living in Eastern Europe.

Zoom in from the world to Eastern Europe and Ukraine sits 2nd of 4 by population and 2nd by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Russia just above and Belarus just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

Russia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Eastern Europe has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇷🇺 Russia
• 🇧🇾 Belarus
• 🇷🇺 Russia

The Ukrainian hryvnia (UAH) is used only in Ukraine among the 249 entries on this site. Its own currency is one of the clearest markers of an economy that sets its own monetary policy rather than importing somebody else's.

Ukrainian is listed for Ukraine and for no other entry on this site. A language confined to one country is unusual, and it is normally a sign of long isolation or of deliberate revival.

Put next to every other entry on this site, Ukraine ranks 46th of 249 by area and 41st by population. That works out at 0.40% of the combined land area of all 249 entries and 0.47% of their combined population. Those denominators matter: this list includes territories and dependencies as well as UN member states, so a rank here is not the same as a rank among sovereign countries.

For a sense of scale, the entries immediately either side of Ukraine in the size ordering are South Sudan at 619,745 km² and Madagascar at 587,041 km², against Ukraine's 603,500 km². If you can already picture one of those, you can picture this one.

Density tells a different story from either raw figure. Ukraine averages 63 people per square kilometre of total area, which makes it middling in density — 152nd of the 247 entries that have both a population and a measured area. Total area includes inland water, so the true figure for habitable land is higher than this.

It uses the Ukrainian hryvnia (₴, UAH). No other entry in this dataset uses it, so the currency is specific to Ukraine.

The top-level domain is .ua. The international dialling code is +380. In ISO terms it is ua in two letters and UKR in three.

Kyiv is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Ukraine is one of the 192 UN member states in this dataset. The other 57 entries are territories, dependencies or observers, which is why totals on this site run to 249 rather than the familiar 195.