Southern Ukraine & Crimea

The Black Sea coast drew Greek colonists from the 7th century BC: Olbia near Mykolaiv, Chersonesus outside today's Sevastopol and Panticapaeum at Kerch traded with Scythian nomads of the steppe. Crimea passed through Roman, Byzantine and Gothic hands, and in the Middle Ages Genoese merchants fortified Kaffa and Sudak. From the 15th century the Crimean Khanate, ruling from Bakhchysarai under Ottoman protection, dominated the peninsula and the steppe.

Beyond the Dnipro rapids, the Zaporozhian Cossacks built their fortified Sich in the 16th century, and Khortytsia island is associated with its beginnings. Russia annexed the Khanate in 1783 and destroyed the Sich in 1775; under Catherine II and Potemkin it founded Kherson, Mykolaiv, Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro) and, in 1794, Odesa, which grew rich as a grain port with Greek, Jewish, Italian and Russian merchants. The Crimean War brought the siege of Sevastopol in 1854–55.

The 20th century brought revolution, famine and war; in 1944 Stalin deported the entire Crimean Tatar people to Central Asia, and many died. Crimea was transferred to Soviet Ukraine in 1954, and Crimean Tatars began returning in 1989. Dnipro became a closed centre of the Soviet rocket industry, and Zaporizhzhia a hub of hydropower and steel. In 2014 Russia seized and annexed Crimea after a referendum held under military occupation, which the UN General Assembly declared invalid. In 2022 Russian forces occupied Kherson and much of Zaporizhzhia Oblast; Ukraine retook Kherson city that November, and the Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro was destroyed in 2023.

The south is a mixed frontier society. Odesa has its own mythology of port-city humour, Jewish storytelling immortalised by Isaac Babel, and a largely Russian-speaking population; the city stages an April Fools' humour festival. The Budjak, south-west of Odesa, has Bulgarian, Gagauz, Moldovan and Old Believer communities, and the Danube town of Vylkove is laid out along canals.

Along the Dnipro, the Cossack legacy is central: Khortytsia and the Zaporozhian Sich are symbols of freedom for all Ukrainians. The village of Petrykivka in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast gave its name to a style of decorative flower painting on UNESCO's intangible heritage list. Mennonite settlers once farmed around Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipro has a large Jewish community centre, the Menorah.

Crimea's indigenous people are the Crimean Tatars, Sunni Muslims with their own Turkic language, who mark the 18 May anniversary of the 1944 deportation and the spring festival of Hıdırellez. Since 2014 their representative body, the Mejlis, has been banned by the Russian authorities and many activists have been prosecuted. Crimea's population also includes many Russians and Ukrainians, and Russian is the dominant language.

Odesa and Dnipro each had about 1 million people before the invasion, Zaporizhzhia around 700,000, Kryvyi Rih about 600,000 and Mykolaiv close to 500,000; Kherson had about 280,000. Simferopol and Sevastopol are Crimea's largest cities.

The economy rests on ports, industry and farming. Odesa grew rich as a grain port, and it and the ports around it remain central to Ukraine's trade. Dnipro has rocket and engineering industries; Kryvyi Rih mines iron ore; Zaporizhzhia makes steel, aero-engines and electricity; and the steppe grows wheat, sunflowers, vegetables and melons, badly hit by the loss of irrigation after the Kakhovka dam's destruction.

Daily life in Ukrainian-held cities is shaped by air-raid alerts and attacks. In Crimea and the occupied mainland, residents live under Russian administration and laws, with Russian passports, currency and schooling imposed, and pro-Ukrainian expression risks arrest.

The south adds the sea and many minorities to Ukrainian cooking. Odesa is known for fried Black Sea gobies (bychky), flounder and mussels, for forshmak, a chopped-herring spread from its Jewish kitchen, and for aubergine dishes such as aubergine "caviar". The Pryvoz market is the city's largest food market.

On the steppe, Kherson is famous for watermelons, Zaporizhzhia remembers Cossack field food such as kulish, a thick porridge. Borscht, varenyky and salo are eaten across the region.

Crimean Tatar cooking is the peninsula's signature: chiburek, a large fried pastry filled with minced meat, its grilled cousin yantyk, pilaf and sweet pastries. Crimea is also Ukraine's historic wine country, with the Massandra winery near Yalta, the sparkling-wine cellars of Novyi Svit near Sudak and those of Inkerman near Sevastopol. On the mainland, Shabo near Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi, settled by Swiss winemakers in 1822, is known for its wine.

Odesa's centre has the Potemkin Stairs with the statue of the Duc de Richelieu at the top, the opera house, Deribasivska Street, the Vorontsov Palace colonnade and the catacombs beneath the city. South-west lie the fortress of Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi and the Danube delta around Vylkove. Mykolaiv has its shipbuilding heritage and the ruins of Olbia nearby; Kherson, the cathedral where Potemkin is buried. The Askania-Nova steppe reserve and the Oleshky Sands lie in the occupied part of Kherson Oblast.

Zaporizhzhia's Khortytsia island has granite cliffs, a reconstructed Cossack Sich and views of the Dnipro dam. Dnipro offers its long riverside embankment and the Menorah centre, and Petrykivka its painting workshops.

Crimea, occupied since 2014, holds the Khan's Palace at Bakhchysarai with the cave town of Chufut-Kale and the Holy Dormition cave monastery nearby. The south coast around Yalta has Livadia Palace, Chekhov's White Dacha, the Vorontsov Palace at Alupka, the Swallow's Nest at Gaspra and the cable car up Ai-Petri. Sevastopol has Chersonesus and the Crimean War panorama, and the east coast has the Genoese fortress at Sudak.