Ukraine, Crimea

Ukraine

Ukraine, with a territory of 603.7 thousand sq kilometres and a population of 48.4 million people, is one of the biggest countries of Europe. Administratively, Ukraine is made up of 24 Oblasts and one Autonomous Republic (Crimea). The capital city is Kyiv.
Ukraine is bordered by Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Moldova on the west and south-west, and by Belarus and Russia on the north and north-east; on the south, Ukraine is bordered by the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
The longest river is Dnipro, and the biggest mountain chain is the Carpathians. It is in the Carpathians that the geographical centre of Europe is located.
Among 454 cities and towns of Ukraine the biggest are: Kyiv (population 2.6 million); Kharkiv (population 1.6 million); Dnipropetrovsk (population 1.1 million); Odesa (population 1.1 million); Donetsk (population 1.1 million), and Lviv (population 802 thousand).
The population of Ukraine is 48.5 million people. The number of ethnic Ukrainians is over 37.5 million people (77.8 of the entire population); over 8 million people are ethnic Russians (17.3 percent of the entire population). 67.5 percent of the Ukrainian citizens regard Ukrainian as their mother tongue.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Simferopol became the capital city of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea within independent Ukraine. Today it has a population of 363,600 (as of 2004) who are mostly ethnic Russians. There are also significant Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar minorities.

Crimea is a country of striking beauty - rolling, fertile countryside, with fruit farms and vineyards in the centre give way to the forested gorges and rocky escarpments of the mountains as you travel south towards the beaches of the Black Sea. And below the Yaila mountains is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful coastlines in the world.

The main branches of the Crimean economy are tourism and agriculture. Industrial plants are situated for the most part in the northern regions of the republic.

Crimea Coast

Above Balaklava rises the Chembalo fortress, built by Genoan settlers in the 16th century

The White Livadia Palace (Crimean Conference of 1945)

Above Picture taken in resort town of Yalta.  The principals of 7 Development Group recently gathered to discuss progress of current projects and to begin talks on future projects.  7 Development Group is in the process of creating a project that will involve the development of an Exclusive Ultra Luxurious Hi Rise Building overlooking the Black Sea!