According to the Peace Worldwide Organization’s Civility Report 2022, Ukraine has a population of about 44 million. It has a reputation for being racist and widely corrupt. It faces internal armed conflict for suppressing the people of Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk regions), a fact that has resulted in many civilian injuries, deaths, and displacements. Torture and other forms of human rights abuses are widely used. Human rights defenders and independent journalists risk being attacked. Harassment and suppression of non-Slavic ethnic minorities, especially the Roma, Tartars, Jews, and political asylum seekers continue. Violence against women and girls remains widespread.

Ukraine has a short history relative to its powerful neighbor Russia. Although people lived there for centuries, as Ali Rogin, a foreign affairs producer at the PBS Newshour, explains, the region was often ruled by Austria-Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, or Russia. The end of World War I inspired an independence movement that led to the birth of the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic in 1922. Ukrainians nevertheless remained divided. Some favored Nazi occupation before World War II.

The territory we now know as Ukraine was finalized when the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev took Crimea away from Russia and gave it to Ukraine. In 1991 when the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine declared independence. In 2004, Ukrainians elected Vikto Yanukovych, a pro-Russian prime-minister, to lead the country, though the election failed to meet international standards.