The territory of present-day Ukraine was a key centre of East Slavic culture in the Middle Ages, before being divided between a variety of powers, notably Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Austria, Romania and the Ottoman Empire. A brief period of independence following the Russian Revolution of 1917 was ended by Ukraine's absorption into the Soviet Union and the republic's present borders were only established in 1954. It became independent once more following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Ukrainian landscape consists mostly of fertile plains, or steppes, and plateaus, crossed by rivers such as the Dnieper, Seversky Donets, Dniester and the Southern Buh as they flow south into the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. To the southwest the delta of the Danube forms the border with Romania. The country's only mountains are the Carpathian Mountains in the west, of which the highest is the Hora Hoverla at 2,061 m, and those in the Crimean peninsula, in the extreme south along the coast.

Ukraine has a mostly temperate continental climate, though a more mediterranean climate is found on the southern Crimean coast. Precipitation is disproportionately distributed; it is highest in the west and north and lesser in the east and southeast. Winters vary from cool along the Black Sea to cold farther inland. Summers are warm across the greater part of the country, but generally hot in the south.