Ukrainian Birds

In olden times, these birds were made to invite people in the village to weddings. They also decorate the wedding bread.

Ukrainian Food

Ukrainian food is one of the richest national cuisines. Its dishes are well known far away from Ukraine. And the Ukrainian recipes of the foods are very popular nowadays. Is anyone, who doesn’t know the Ukrainian Borsch?

The Ukrainian food is characterized with large number of components. For example the traditional Ukrainian food – borsch – contains 20 components. The peculiarities have the thermal processing of the products of the dishes. As a rule, there are used several types of thermal processing for the preparing of the food (frying, boiling, stewing, baking). The rules of food processing are strictly held in Ukrainian restaurants, to reach the best taste of the national dishes. The recipes of the Ukrainian cuisine include the number of different fruits and vegetables, as well as meat, poultry, fish, mushrooms and berries. The most common meat product is pork. The meat is present in large amount in first courses, among which the major one is borsch.

In Ukrainian food borsch occupies the first place, but not the single one. The popular dishes are also cereals: millet, buckwheat, pumpkin etc. The rather important place in recipes of Ukrainian food belongs to floury foods: curds, dumplings, grechaniki, cottage cheese patty, potaptsy, pancakes, verguny, mandryky, puchkenyky and others. The rich assortment of egg dishes (fried eggs with “salo” (fat) and sausage etc).

Among the traditional sweet foods the most popular are uswars (stewed fruits) and jellied fruits. To prepare sweet dishes are used plums, apples, pears, apricots, cherries, red currants, strawberries, wild strawberries, raspberries, honey, nuts. Ukrainian cuisine was always famous for the big number of foods with fruits and berries, raised on the Ukrainian lands.

The very tasteful are dishes, which stewed in ceramic pots: roast meat, curds with sour cream, stewed cabbage, potatoes with meat and prunes.

Ukrainian cuisine has dozens thousands of food recipes, which are characterized with plane food cooking and high taste qualities. The modern national culinary art preserved and enriched the old good traditions

22 Fun Fact About UKRAINE

Svitlana Tuchynska
Take a quick lesson on Euro 2012 co-host Ukraine. It is Ukraine, not "the Ukraine."

More than half (53 percent) of the population speaks Ukrainian and 44 percent Russian.

The capital, Kyiv, is mostly a Russian-speaking city.

While the population of Ukraine is 45.6 million, at least 10 million Ukrainians live abroad. Most live in Russia (around four million), Kazakhstan, the U.S., Canada, Moldova, Poland, Argentina and Brazil.

The medieval state ofKyivan Rus, with its capital in Kyiv, was founded by the Vikings in 9th century, according to the most popular theory.

Ukraine claims to be home to the geographical center of Europe, which is near the western town of Rakhiv. Other places in Europe claim to have the center, and the definition depends on the methodology used.

EURO 2012 Official promo video of Kyiv

Bohdan Khmeinytsky, a central figure in Ukrainian history during the 17th century, stands in Kiev, backdropped by St. Michael's Cathedral. Khmeinytsky, a leader of Ukrainian Cossacks, announced a union with Russia in 1654 that lasted more than 300 years.

Travel to Ukraine

Ukrainian (Українська)

Ukrainian is an Eastern Slavonic language closely related to Russian and Belarusian. It is spoken by about 51 million people in Ukraine (Україна) and in many other countries, including Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Paraguay, Poland, Romania, Russia and Slovakia.

The recorded history of the Ukrainian language began in 988, when the principality of Kiev (Київ) was converted to Christianity. Ukrainian religious material, including translations of the Bible, was written in Old Slavonic, the language used by missionaries to spread Christianity to the Slavic peoples.

In the 13th century, Ukraine became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuanian and Ruthenian, an ancestor of Belarusian and Ukrainian became the main language. The remaining parts of Ukraine were taken over by Poland during the 16th century and Latin and Polish were used for official purposes. Ruthenian began to split into Ukrainian and Belarusian during this period.

The Cossacks later moved into eastern Ukraine and during the 17th century, their leader, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, invited Russia to help against Polish domination in 1648. During the reign of Catherine the Great, the Cossacks moved to the eastern frontiers of Russia, but Ukraine remained under Russian domination, and the Russians considered the Ukrainian language as little more than a dialect of Russian.

A decree in 1876 banned the printing or importing of Ukrainian books. Inspite of this, there was a revival of Ukrainian poetry and historiography during the 19th century.

Ukraine enjoyed a brief period of independence from 1918 to 1919, then was taken over by the USSR and declared a Soviet Republic. During the Soviet era, Russian was the main language of education and employment and Ukrainian was sidelined.

Ukraine declared independence in 1991. Since then many Ukrainian émigrés have returned to Ukraine, particularly from central Asia and Siberia.

Please note, the capital of Ukraine is written Київ (Kyiv) in Ukrainian, Kiev in English and Киев (Kiev) in Russian.
Ukrainian alphabet (українська абетка)

Sample text in Ukrainian

Всі люди народжуються вільними і рівними у своїй гідності та правах. Вони наділені розумом і совістю і повинні діяти у відношенні один до одного в дусі братерства.

Transliteration
Vsi ljudy narodžujut'sja vil'nymy i rivnymy u svojij hidnosti ta pravax. Vony nadileni rozumom i sovistju i povynni dijaty u vidnošenni odyn do odnoho v dusi braterstva.

A recording of this text by Anatoli Sakhnik
Translation

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
(Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights)