What is the capital of Ukraine?

The capital of Ukraine is Kyiv. It sits on the Dnipro River and has been a major political and cultural center of Eastern Europe for more than a thousand years.

Kyiv was the center of Kyivan Rus, a medieval state whose rulers helped spread Christianity through the region. The city was devastated during the Mongol invasion of 1240, but later became important under Lithuanian, Polish-Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian rule. It became the capital of independent Ukraine when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991.

The spelling “Kyiv” reflects the Ukrainian name, while “Kiev” is derived from Russian usage. Ukraine’s government and many international organizations adopted “Kyiv” as the preferred English transliteration in the late 2010s. Both spellings refer to the same city, but Kyiv is the standard modern form.

Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second-largest city and was briefly the capital of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s and 1930s. Odesa and Lviv are also major Ukrainian cities, but neither is the national capital.