Ukraine (sometimes called The Ukraine) is a country a little smaller than Texas with a population of 44.13 million, a little greater than California. They declared their independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, but have historically been their own nation with their own culture, language, and tribal heritage long before the Soviet Union came to be. There was a tumultuous revolution in the early 2000s with the Ukrainian people struggling to retain fair democracy in the face of rising authoritarianism in the government, seemingly fueled by their neighbor Russia. In 2014, Russia annexed (claimed by military force with no rightful claim to back them up) an area of Ukraine called Crimea (or The Crimea) and despite global outcry, it has remained occupied since then by the Russian military.
Their capital is Kyiv (pronounced kuh-YEEV or keh-YEEV) and they border Russia to the east, Belarus (Europe's last dictatorship, a Russian ally) to the north, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Moldova to the west and the Black Sea to the South. Ukraine is a part of the European Union and is allied with NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ukraine is known by the nickname "the Breadbasket of Europe" because of the amount of wheat their plains produce and the native peoples are ethnically Slavic.
