Driving Directions Ukraine
UKRAINE, formerly a Soviet socialist republic, declared itself independent of the former USSR in 1991. An eastern European country shares borders with Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Within Europe, it is surpassed in size only by Russia. The Crimean Peninsula in the south (Crimea), which borders the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, has been an autonomous region within Ukraine between 1996-2014. Russian forces seized Crimea by force in 2014. Russia then annexed Crimea in 2014 following a referendum, administers it as two federal subjects of Russia, and claimed it to be “fully integrated” in July 2015.