Urban districts of Ukraine
An urban district or urban raion is the second-level administrative division in certain cities in Ukraine. There are 118 districts in 20 cities across Ukraine. The cities that contain districts are mostly administrative centers in addition to the two cities with special status. The number of city districts per region varies between a minimum of two and a high of 21 in Donetsk Oblast. The maximum districts for a single city in the country is Kyiv, which has 10 districts. Cities which have abolished their urban districts are marked in italics below.
Article 133 of the Constitution of Ukraine defines city districts as an element of the administrative-territorial division of the state, while Article 140 states that issues in the organization and management of city districts belongs to the competence of city councils. City districts are subordinate to a city's administration. The status of Kyiv city is defined by the law Про столицю України - місто-герой Київ. Since 18 March 2014, due to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the urban districts of Sevastopol and Simferopol have been controlled by Russia.
During the Donbas war, a number of urban districts located in cities in southeastern Donetsk Oblast and southern Luhansk Oblast were occupied by pro-Russian separatist forces. As of 30 September 2022, Russia officially claims the formerly-separatist controlled urban districts in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts as part of its administrative divisions in addition to urban districts located in other cities occupied by Russia since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. Before February 2016, many districts were named for people, places, events, and organizations associated with the Soviet Union and Russian Empire; many were renamed since to comply with decommunization and derussification laws.