Ukraine is part of Eastern Europe. It shares borders with the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, and with Belarus towards the northwest border. Hungary, Slovakia and Poland are to its west; Romania and Moldova share its southwest border; and the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea are to its south and southeast borders.
The entire country constitutes a total land area of 603,628 Km2. This makes Ukraine by far the biggest country in the whole of Europe. The population density is currently at approximately 73 people per square kilometer.
Ukraine is a unitary state comprised of 24 provinces. It also has the Crimean Peninsula and 2 cities with very special status. These cities are Kiev and the capital of the country, Sevastopol.
Sevastopol is located on the Black Sea coast of the Crimean Peninsula. It is the largest port in Ukraine. (The first was Port of Odesa.) The city houses the vast population of 342,451 people, which was calculated in the 2001 consensus. The city lies on an area of 864 Km2 which is about 0.14% of the whole country.
The people in Ukraine are known to be from several religious affiliations. These include the most common ones - the Kiev Patriarchy Orthodox Church, the Moscow Patriarchate Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, Protestant churches, the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, and Jewish - and some other minority religions as well.
The total population in Ukraine is estimated to be 44.01 million in 2018, down from 45.55 million in 2013. This figure makes it the 31st most-populated country in the world. The population growth rate, as of 2012, is estimated to be -3.1%. The negative growth rate indicates a decline in the population.
January 2, 2018 (click here)
Snow covers agricultural land near Ternopil, Ukraine.
Mriya Agro Holding Plc, the company hauling away the last of the sugar beet crop, owns none of the wide-open field. Under the snow, it’s a patchwork of 270 individual plots that the company leases for three to five years each. The peasants, who were bequeathed the land after the fall of communism, aren’t allowed to sell, and the company isn’t allowed to buy, so it has little incentive to spend any money to increase the harvest.
...According to the World Bank’s Special Focus Note (click here) on international trade, Ukraine has tremendous potential to boost exports of higher-value added products, but this potential has not yet been realized.
Ukraine’s exports remain concentrated in metals and cereals, while the share of exports integrated with Global Value Chains (GVC) remains low at 5.7 percent in Ukraine, compared to 27 percent for Poland, 38 percent for Romania, 38 percent for Turkey, and 59 percent for Vietnam.
Boosting higher-value added and GVC exports is a major opportunity for Ukraine to leverage its special access to the EU market. Ukraine has demonstrated potential on this front through the exports of automotive ignition wiring sets which grew from $21 million in 2000 to $1.217 billion in 2017, one of the fastest growing export product categories in recent years.
Reforms to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) are an important driver of exports and integration into GVCs. Specifically, this will require reforms to strengthen anticorruption measures and the rule of law, make progress on privatization, safeguard macroeconomic stability, and clean up the high share of non-performing loans.
Ukraine also needs to create an efficient and competitive logistics system to boost exports and accelerate its integration into the global economy. Specifically, this will require improving regulatory clarity and the management of public assets, increasing utilization of river transport, reforming the railway system, and addressing inefficiencies in the storage system.
