Minorities in Ukraine


Minorities in Ukraine form 22.2 percent of the country's population as of 2001. Large ethnic Russian, Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian minorities exist in Ukraine, and Romania and Hungary have striven for the minority rights of the minorities they respectively represent. Ukraine also has a small number of Poles, Jews, Armenians, Roma and other nationalities.
Issues regarding minorities in Ukraine are, according to Financial Times, the biggest potential obstacle to the start of negotiations for the accession of Ukraine to the European Union. Prime Minister of Hungary Viktor Orbán has threatened to veto Ukraine's process of EU accession numerous times over minority rights issues.

Ethnic groups

The following table shows the number and percentage of the population belonging to major ethnic minorities per the 2001 Ukrainian census.
NationalityNumberPercentage
Russians8,334,141
Belarusians275,763
Moldovans1258,619
Crimean Tatars248,193
Bulgarians204,574
Hungarians156,566
Romanians1150,989
Poles144,130
Jews103,591
Armenians99,894
Greeks91,548
Tatars73,304
Romani47,587
Azerbaijanis45,176
Georgians34,199
Germans33,302
Gagauz31,923
Koreans12,711
Uzbeks12,353
Chuvash10,593
Mordvins29,331
Turks8,844
Lithuanians7,207
Arabs6,575
Slovaks6,397
Czechs5,917
Kazakhs5,526
Latvians5,079

Other notable ethnic minorities are the Albanians, Austrians, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks, Swedes and.

Sub-ethnic groups

The 2001 Ukrainian census listed seven sub-ethnic groups of Ukrainians: Boykos, Hutsuls, Lemkos, Litvins, Polishchuks, Rusyns, and, with nobody identifying as the latter at the time of the census. Other sub-groups of Ukrainians include the, Bukovinians,,, Podolyans,, Siverians,, and Volhynians. Outside of Ukraine, the Rusyns are often recognized as a separate nationality.
Russian sub-ethnic groups in Ukraine are the Lipovans and Molokans, as well as the Goryuns, who self-identify as a separate ethnic group distinct from both Russians and Ukrainians, or as a mix of the two. Other such groups are the Crimean and Nadazovia Greeks; Carpathian, Crimean, Galician, Mennonite, Volhynian, and Zipser Germans; as well as Meskhetian Turks, Bessarabian Bulgarians, and Hollenders.

Indigenous peoples of Ukraine

According to the 2021 law "On the Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine", the indigenous peoples of Ukraine are defined as ethnic minorities with distinctive languages, cultures, and representative bodies, that formed on the territory of Ukraine and do not have their own state entities outside of the country. The law lists the Crimean Tatars, Crimean Karaites and Krymchaks as such indigenous peoples of Crimea. There have been attempts to recognize other groups, such as the Gagauz and the Nadazovia Greeks, as indigenous.