Ethnic composition

Although over 99% of Ukraine's inhabitants have Ukrainian citizenship, the national or ethnic composition of the population is more diverse. At the time of the 2001 census, 78% of respondents declared themselves to be Ukrainians, 17% Russians and 5% as belonging to one of over 130 other nationalities or ethnic groups. Among the latter the most numerous were Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tartars, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, Jews, Armenians and Greeks.

At the beginning of the 20th century the proportion of Russians within Ukraine’s current borders was about 10%, having grown from an insignificant number as a result of the integration of Ukraine into the Russian Empire following the Treaty of Pereiaslav (1654). After the Second World War the proportion more than doubled as a consequence of the Soviet policy whereby many Ukrainians were induced or compelled to move to other parts of the USSR and Russians were encouraged to move to Ukraine. The 17% recorded in the 2001 census compares with 22% in 1989. The largest concentrations of Russians in Ukraine are in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the East and in the Crimea – together accounting for 51% of the 8.3 million Russians in the country in 2001. Russians acounted for over 10% of the population in each of nine regions in eastern and southern Ukraine.

The Crimea is the only part of Ukraine in which Ukrainians are a minority (60% Russians, 24% Ukrainians, 10% Crimean Tatars, 6% others). The indigenous Crimean Tatars, who made up a quarter of the peninsula’s population before the Second World War, accounted for less than 2% in 1989, following their mass deportation to Siberia by Stalin in 1944. In recent years the Ukrainian government has been facilitating their return.

Other significant concentrations of non-Ukrainians are those of Romanians and Moldovans in the Chernivtsi region (12% and 7%, respectively, in 2001), Hungarians in the Transcarpathia Region (12%) and Bulgarians and Moldovans in the Odesa region (6% and 5%).