Russians in Ukraine

Russians are the largest ethnic minority in Ukraine. This community forms the largest single Russian community outside of Russia in the world. In the 2001 Ukrainian census, 8,334,100 identified as ethnic Russians (17.3% of the population of Ukraine); this is the combined figure for persons originating from outside of Ukraine and the Ukrainian-born population declaring Russian ethnicity. Ethnic Russians live throughout Ukraine. They comprise a notable fraction of the overall population in the east and south, a significant minority in the center, and a smaller minority in the west. The west and the center of the country feature a higher percentage of Russians in cities and industrial centers and much smaller percentage in the overwhelmingly Ukrainophone rural areas. Due to the concentration of the Russians in the cities, as well as for historic reasons, most of the largest cities in the center and the south-east of the country (including Kyiv where Russians amount to 13.1% of the population) remained largely Russophone . Russians constitute the majority in Crimea (71.7% in Sevastopol and 58.5% in the Autonomous republic of Crimea), the southern peninsula which the Soviet government transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. Outside of Crimea, Russians are the largest ethnic group in Donetsk (48.2%) and Makiyivka (50.8%) in Donetsk Oblast, Ternivka (52.9%) in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Krasnodon (63.3%) and Sverdlovsk (58.7%) and Krasnodonskyi raion (51.7%) and Stanychno-Luhanskyi (61.1%) raion in Luhansk Oblast, Izmail (43.7%) in Odesa Oblast, Putyvl Raion (51.6%) in Sumy Oblast. One of the most prominent Russians in Medieval Ukraine (at that time the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth) was Ivan Fyodorov, who published the Ostrog Bible and called himself a Muscovite. In 1599, Tsar Boris Godunov ordered the construction of Tsareborisov on the banks of Oskol River, the first city and the first fortress in Eastern Ukraine. To defend the territory from Tatar raids the Russians built the Belgorod defensive line (1635–1658), and Ukrainians started fleeing to be under its defense.