Sports and recreation
Ukraine benefited immensely from the Soviet emphasis on sports and physical education, which left the country with hundreds of stadiums, swimming pools, gymnasiums, and other athletic facilities. Popular sports include track and field, volleyball, shooting, basketball, swimming, and gymnastics. Football (soccer), however, is by far the favourite sport, and archrivals Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kiev are two of the country’s most popular clubs. Ukraine was the cohost of football’s European Championship tournament in 2012. Chess is also considered a sport.
Ukrainian athletes excelled in international competitions while representing the U.S.S.R. Since independence, Ukraine has fielded its own Olympic teams, featuring such notable gold medal winners as figure skater Oksana Baiul, heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko (Ukrainian: Volodymyr Klichko), weightlifter Timur Taimazov, gymnast Liliya Podkopayeva, and swimmer Yana Klochkova. Klitschko, along with his brother Vitali, dominated the heavyweight ranks of professional boxing in the early 21st century, and Vitali used his popularity to launch a political career.
The country has several national parks, including the Carpathian National Park and the Shatskyy National Park. Forest parks, located near major cities, offer picnicking, swimming, hiking, and cross-country skiing. Some of the larger cities have urban “culture and recreation” parks, where theatres, lecture halls, reading rooms, and playgrounds are found amid gardens and wooded areas. Near the city of Yalta is located the Nikitsky Botanical Garden, in which plants from almost every country in the world are found.
In Transcarpathia and near the cities of Lviv, Vinnytsya, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, Poltava, and Kharkiv are health spas noted for their mineral springs. Spas near the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov specialize in mud baths.
Media and publishing
The demise of the Soviet Union brought fundamental changes to publishing and broadcasting in Ukraine. The Communist Party’s influence was no longer a factor, and state control—and funding—receded. As a result, many established newspapers and journals ceased publication. The print runs of those that did continue, as private ventures, were in general considerably smaller. At the same time, numerous new publications and private television and radio stations emerged during the 1990s. Although Soviet-era restrictions on content were lifted, publications that were critical of the local or national administration were subjected to various forms of harassment—for example, tax inspections, detailed examinations of registration documents, or libel suits of dubious credibility. In addition, state broadcasters provided slanted coverage of political events. Much of this changed in the wake of the Orange Revolution in 2004. Amid the political turmoil that marked that event and the period that followed, press freedoms expanded. The election of Yanukovych as president in 2010, however, led to an increase in official pressure on journalists, and preferential coverage of the ruling party was the norm. On the whole, however, the media remain much more open and credible than they were in Soviet times.
The official news agency is the Ukrainian National Information Agency (UkrInform), which covers political, economic, cultural, and sports information. Independent news agencies include Respublika Ukrainian Independent Information Agency (UNIAR) and the Ukrainian Independent Information and News Agency (UNIAN).
Official publications include the Supreme Council’s Holos Ukrainy (“Voice of Ukraine”) and the cabinet’s Uryadovy Kur’yer (“Administrative Courier”). The largest newspapers include Silski Visti (“Rural News”), a former organ of the Communist Party; Robitnycha Hazeta (“Workers’ Gazette”); Ukrainya Moloda (“Ukraine the Young”); and Pravda Ukrayiny (“Truth of Ukraine”). Other noteworthy periodicals include Den’ (“The Day”), which publishes editions in Ukrainian and Russian; the influential Zerkalo Nedeli (“Weekly Mirror”); the English-language Kyiv Post; the weekly journal Polityka i Kul’tura (“Politics and Culture”); and the high-calibre literary and cultural review Krytyka (“Critique”).
The National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine regulates and monitors major television and radio broadcasting companies. Dozens of television networks are available, either as terrestrial signals or via cable or satellite. Beginning in 2011, Ukraine’s national networks switched from an analog television signal to a higher definition digital signal. Most commercial radio stations are local or regional in nature and usually feature a contemporary music and talk format. Lubomyr A. Hajda Andrij Makuch The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
History
Prehistory
From prehistoric times, migration and settlement patterns in the territories of present-day Ukraine varied fundamentally along the lines of three geographic zones. The Black Sea coast was for centuries in the sphere of the contemporary Mediterranean maritime powers. The open steppe, funneling from the east across southern Ukraine and toward the mouth of the Danube River, formed a natural gateway to Europe for successive waves of nomadic horsemen from Central Asia. And the mixed forest-steppe and forest belt of north-central and western Ukraine supported an agricultural population (most notably the Trypillya culture of the mid-5th to 3rd millennia bce), linked by waterways to northern and central Europe. The marshlands of these zones were frequent areas of both military conflict and cultural transmission.
Beginning in the 7th–6th centuries bce, numerous Greek colonies were founded on the northern coast of the Black Sea, on the Crimean Peninsula, and along the Sea of Azov; these Hellenic outposts later came under the hegemony of the Roman Empire (see ancient Greek civilization; ancient Rome). During the 1st millennium bce the steppe hinterland was occupied successively by the Cimmerians, Scythians, and Sarmatians. These peoples, all of Iranian stock, maintained commercial and cultural relations with the Greek colonies.
Ukraine: historical regionsHistorical regions of Ukraine.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
A period of great migrations began with the descent of the Goths from the Baltic region into Ukraine about 200 ce. They displaced the Sarmatians, but their own power was broken about 375 by the invading Huns from the east, who were followed in the 5th–6th centuries by the Bulgars and Avars. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Ukrainian steppe formed part of the Turkic Khazar mercantile empire, which was centred on the lower Volga River. Khazar control of the steppe was breached in the late 9th century by the Magyars (Hungarians). The Pechenegs, who followed, dominated much of southern Ukraine in the 10th and 11th centuries, and they were in turn succeeded by the Polovtsians (Cumans). Throughout this period of nomadic invasions, only a few of the Greek settlements on the Crimean Peninsula, notably Chersonesus (see Tauric Chersonese), maintained a precarious existence, relying on the support of the Byzantine Empire.
In the meantime, under the impact of Germanic migrations, the movement of Slavic tribes from their primordial homeland north of the Carpathians began in the 5th and 6th centuries. While some Slavs migrated westward and others south into the Balkans, the East Slavs occupied the forest and forest-steppe regions of what are now western and north-central Ukraine and southern Belarus; they expanded farther north and to the northeast into territories of the future Russian state centred on Moscow. The East Slavs practiced agriculture and animal husbandry, engaged in such domestic industries as cloth making and ceramics, and built fortified settlements, many of which later developed into important commercial and political centres. Among such early settlements was Kiev (Kyiv), on the high right (western) bank of the Dnieper River.