Merkel, Hollande meet Putin for Ukraine crisis talks
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande have started a crucial meeting with the Russian President in Moscow on a new peace initiative for Ukraine. Merkel and...
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Merkel, Hollande meet Putin for Ukraine crisis talks - Video
Putin, Hollande, Merkel talks on Ukraine constructive, possible document #39;in progress #39;
German, French and Russian leaders conclude their talks over the Ukrainian crisis, with preliminary results to be announced on Sunday. Work is underway on a possible joint document aimed at...
By: RT
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Putin, Hollande, Merkel talks on Ukraine constructive, possible document 'in progress' - Video
Attacks in Ukraine leave villagers stranded
CBS News #39; Elizabeth Palmer reports from eastern Ukraine where some villages are being hard-hit by attacks from pro-Russian rebels. Where the Ukrainian government is able to help some areas,...
By: CBS Evening News
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Attacks in Ukraine leave villagers stranded - Video
The demographics of Ukraine include statistics on population growth, population density, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population.
The data in this article are based on the most recent Ukrainian Census, which was carried out in 2001,[1] the CIA World Factbook, and the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. The next census is scheduled to take place in 2016.[2]
45,426,249 (1 January 2014)[3]
(2013 official.)
(2014 official.)
There were roughly 4 million Ukrainians at the end of the 17th century.[4] The historical information is taken out of Demoscope.ru. Please, note that territory of the modern Ukraine at the times listed above varied greatly. The western regions of Ukraine, west of Zbruch river, until 1939 for most of time were part of the Kingdom Galicia and later the Polish Republic. The detailed information for those territories is missing, for more information see Demographics of Poland. The Crimean peninsula was changing hands as well, in 1897 it was a part of the Taurida Governorate, but after the October Revolution became part of the Russian SFSR, and later was turned under the administration of the Ukrainian SSR.
The territory of Budjak (southern Bessarabia) became a part of the Ukrainian SSR in June 1940. The censuses of 1926 through 1989 were taken in the Ukrainian SSR. The census of 1897 is taken with the correspondence to nine gubernias that included in the territory of today's Ukraine. The statistics of 1905 records are taken from http://www.statoids.com which provides a broad degree of historical explanation on the situation in the Imperial Russia. The census statistics of 1931 was estimated by the professor Zenon Kuzela (18821952)[5] from Berlin. His calculations are as of January 1, 1931. This ethnograph is mentioned in the encyclopedia of Ukraine as one of the sources only available due to lack of the official census.[6][7]
The 2001 census was the first official census of the independent republic of Ukraine. Its data is given as on January 1. The 2003-2009 stats were taken from the official web-site of http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua and represent the data as of February of each year for the real population.
The figures below refer to the nine governorates of the Russian Empire (Volhynia, Yekaterinoslav, Kiev, Podolia, Poltava, Taurida, Kharkov, Kherson and Chernigov) with a Ukrainian majority.[8]
(a) Information is given for Ukraine`s territory within its old boundaries up to September 17, 1939 (b) Information is given for Ukraine`s territory within its present-day boundaries, after the annexation of ethnic Ukrainian Polish territories on September 17, 1939
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Demographics of Ukraine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Source: Bloomberg
Ukraine, to use a technical term, is broke. That's what you call a country whose currency has lost half its value in just twodays.
The problem is simple: Ukraine has no money and barely any economy. It's already talking to the IMF about a $15 billion bailout and what's euphemistically being called a debt "restructuring"i.e., defaultas its reserves have dwindled down to $6.42 billion, only enough to cover five weeks of imports. (Three months worth is considered the absolute least you can get by with).
So it was more than a bit belated for Ukraine to stop spending the few dollars it does have on propping up its currency, the hryvnia. It took until Thursday for it to do that, though, and, when it did, the reaction was swift and it was violent. The hyrvnia fell from 16.8 to 24.4 per dollar, and then again to 25.3 on Friday, on this news that the government wouldn't intervene it in anymore. In all, it was a 50 percent decline in 48 hours. And this was despite the fact that its central bank simultaneously jacked up interest rates from 14 to 19.5 percent to try to get people to hold their money in hyrvinia that would pay them a lot instead of dollars that wouldn't. That, as you can see, didn't exactly work.
Now let's back up a minute. Why is Ukraine so doomed? Well, it's been mismanaged on a world-historical scale by oligarchs who, for decades, have skimmed billions off the country's nonexistent growth. That last part's not hyperbole. It seems almost impossible, but Ukraine's economy has actually shrunk since communism ended in 1991. Or since 1992. Or even 1993. And now its not-so-cold war with Russia is destroying the little that's left. It's not just that the rebel strongholds in the factory-heavy east have deprived Ukraine of a quarter of its industrial capacity. It's that it can't afford to fight against what's still it's biggest trading partnerRussia. Think about that. You don't usually trade a lot with the country you're going to battle against, but Ukraine's economy is so dependent on Russia's that it still trades more with it than any other. That means anything that hurts Russia, like lower oil prices or sanctions, just redounds onto Ukraine, and puts it in an even bigger financial hole.
Ukraine, in other words, doesn't have a lot of foreign currency, and doesn't have a lot of ways to earn more of it. Not when it didn't have much of an economy to begin with, it's fighting its biggest trading partner, and separatists have taken away its industrial heartland. The only questions are how big the bailout will be, and how far the hrvynia will fall in the meantime.
Ukraine's currency is weak, and that's not a game.
Matt O'Brien is a reporter for Wonkblog covering economic affairs. He was previously a senior associate editor at The Atlantic.
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Wonkblog: Ukraines currency just collapsed 50 percent in two days