Minorities in Ukraine

Minorities in Ukraine form 22.2 percent of the country's population as of 2001. Large ethnic Russian (the largest ethnic minority in the country), Belarusian, Crimean Tatar, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and Romanian (including Moldovan) 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.

The following table shows the number and percentage of the population belonging to major (above 5,000 people) ethnic minorities per the 2001 Ukrainian census.

¹ There is a controversy over the self-identification of Moldovans, with some authors considering them ethnic Romanians.
² Erzyas and Mokshas

Other notable ethnic minorities are the Albanians, Austrians, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks and Swedes (in Gammalsvenskby).

The 2001 Ukrainian census listed seven sub-ethnic groups of Ukrainians: Boykos, Hutsuls, Lemkos, Litvins, Polishchuks, Rusyns, and Pinchuks [uk], with nobody identifying as the latter at the time of the census. Other sub-groups of Ukrainians include the Batyuks [uk], Bukovinians, Dolynians [uk], Opolyans [uk], Podolyans, Pokuttians [uk], Siverians, Slobozhans [uk], 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, Hollenders and the Romanian-speaking Vlachs/Volokhs [uk].

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.