Central Ukraine

Several Oblasts can be referred to as "Central Ukraine":
  Red - always included
  Brown - often included
  Orange - sometimes included

Central Ukraine (Ukrainian: Центральна Україна, Tsentralna Ukrayina) consists of historic regions of left-bank Ukraine and right-bank Ukraine that reference to the Dnieper river. It is situated away from the Black Sea Littoral North and a midstream of Dnieper river and its basin.

Territory

The territory is often associated with the 17th century Cossack Hetmanate.

It mostly corresponds to:

Sometimes, a separate region of northern Ukraine is identified based on Severia and eastern Polissya, while Kirovohrad region is associated with the southern Ukraine and Black Sea Littoral.

Unlike the big cities of the Ukrainian south and east, the cities of the central Ukraine are among the oldest on the continent, among which are: Kiev, Vinnytsia, Poltava, Chernihiv. Also in contrast to the southeastern portion of the country, the region is more agricultural with extensive grain and sunflower fields in the heart of Ukraine.

73% of the regions inhabitants mainly speak Ukrainian at home according to a February 2012 poll by RATING; according to an August 2011 poll by Research & Branding Group this was 60% (in both polls the other language used at home was the Russian language).[1][2] Many also speak Surzhyk, a term for mixed Russian-Ukrainian dialects.

The average views of the regions inhabitants on sensitive issues in current Ukraine such as the Russian language, Joseph Stalin and Ukrainian nationalism tends not to be so extreme as in Western Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine and Southern Ukraine.[1][3][4][5] In a poll conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in the first half of February 2014, only 5.4% of polled in Central Ukraine believed "Ukraine and Russia must unite into a single state", whereas nationwide this percentage was 12.5.[6]

Elections in the Central Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) have historically been competitive between pro-Russian and pro-Western candidates. However, since the 2004 Orange Revolution, Central Ukrainian voters have started to lean toward more pro-Western parties (Our Ukraine, Batkivshchyna)[7] and presidential candidates (Viktor Yuschenko and Yulia Tymoshenko).[8][9][10]

Regions

Region Population
(thousands) 		Notes
Cherkasy Oblast 1,402.9
Chernihiv Oblast 1,245.3
Kiev Oblast
(excluding Kiev city)		 1,827.9
Kiev city 2,611.3
Kirovohrad Oblast 1,058
Poltava Oblast 1,630.1
Sumy Oblast 1,299.7
Vinnytsia Oblast 1,772.4
Zhytomyr Oblast 1,389.5
Total 14,237.1

Note that sometimes Khmelnytskyi Oblast is considered a part of the Central Ukraine as it is mostly lies within the western Podillya.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 The language question, the results of recent research in 2012, RATING (25 May 2012)
  2. ↑ Poll: Ukrainian language prevails at home, Ukrinform (7 September 2011)
  3. ↑ http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/poll-over-half-of-ukrainians-against-granting-official-status-to-russian-language-318212.html
  4. ↑ (Ukrainian) Ставлення населення України до постаті Йосипа Сталіна Attitude population Ukraine to the figure of Joseph Stalin, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (1 March 2013)
  5. ↑ Who’s Afraid of Ukrainian History? by Timothy D. Snyder, The New York Review of Books (21 September 2010)
  6. ↑ How relations between Ukraine and Russia should look like? Public opinion polls’ results, Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (4 March 2014)
  7. ↑ Центральна виборча комісія України - WWW відображення ІАС "Вибори народних депутатів України 2012"
    CEC substitues Tymoshenko, Lutsenko in voting papers
  8. ↑ Communist and Post-Communist Parties in Europe by Uwe Backes and Patrick Moreau, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-36912-8 (page 396)
  9. ↑ Ukraine right-wing politics: is the genie out of the bottle?, openDemocracy.net (January 3, 2011)
  10. ↑ Eight Reasons Why Ukraine’s Party of Regions Will Win the 2012 Elections by Taras Kuzio, The Jamestown Foundation (17 October 2012)
    UKRAINE: Yushchenko needs Tymoshenko as ally again by Taras Kuzio, Oxford Analytica (5 October 2007)