Sloboda Ukraine, also known locally as Slobozhanshchyna or Slobozhanshchina, is a historical region in northeastern Ukraine and southwestern Russia. It developed from Belgorod Razriad and flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries on the southwestern frontier of the Tsardom of Russia. In 1765, it was converted into the Sloboda Ukraine Governorate.

Its name derives from the term sloboda for a colonial settlement free of tax obligations, and the word Ukraine was used to refer to the area inhabited by Ukrainian Cossacks and settlers. The word Ukraine is often considered to originally refer to a 'borderland', a view supported by Russian, Ukrainian, and Western historians such as Orest Subtelny, Paul Magocsi, Omeljan Pritsak, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Ivan Ohiyenko, Petro Tolochko, and others. It is supported by the Encyclopedia of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Etymological Dictionary. Some Ukrainian historians claim the original meaning of the word is 'country', 'region' or 'homeland'.

The territory of historic Sloboda Ukraine corresponds to parts of the present-day Ukrainian oblasts (provinces) of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Luhansk, as well as parts of Belgorod, Kursk, and Voronezh oblasts of Russia.

Russia gained control over the territory as a result of conquests against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars in the 16th century.

According to Russian and Ukrainian sources of the 16th–17th centuries, the region was initially part of the Russian state, which encouraged the settlement of this territory for defensive purposes. It was first colonized by the Russians in the first half of the 16th century and became part of a defense line used against the Crimean–Nogai slave raids. A second wave of colonization occurred in the 1620s to 1630s, largely in the form of Ukrainian Cossack regiments, who were allowed to settle there to help protect the territory against the Tatars.

The Cossacks who arrived in Sloboda Ukraine were under the sovereignty of Russian tsars and their military chancellery, and were registered in Russian military service. Many Ukrainian refugees arrived from Poland-Lithuania after the Ostryanyn uprising of 1637–1638 and received generous resettlement subsidies from the Russian government. For decades, Ukrainian Cossacks crossed the border into southern Russia to gather livestock. Still, many of them engaged in banditry, prompting Russia to establish a new garrison town on the Boguchar River to defend the land from Ukrainian bandits. Russia also resettled many of the Ukrainian refugees at Valuyki, Korocha, Voronezh, and as far as Kozlov.

Crimean Tatars and Nogai Tatars traditionally utilized the sparsely inhabited area of the Wild Fields on the border of Russia, immediately south of Severia, to launch annual raids into Russian territories along the Muravsky Trail and Izyum Trail. In 1591, a Tatar raid reached the Moscow region, compelling the Russian government to construct new forts, including Belgorod and Oskol in 1593, Yelets in 1592, Kromy in 1595, Kursk in 1597, and Tsarev-Borisov and Valuyki in 1600. Tsarev-Borisov, named after Tsar Boris I, was the oldest settlement in Sloboda Ukraine.

During those raids, regions near Ryazan and along the Oka River suffered the most. The conflict intensified with Russian territorial expansion south and east into the lands of modern Sloboda Ukraine and the mid-Volga River. Sometime between the 1580s and 1640s, the Belgorod Defense Line was constructed in Sloboda Ukraine, featuring several fortifications, moats, and forts, providing security to the region. After several Russo-Crimean Wars, Russian monarchs began to encourage the settlement of the area by Cossacks, who served as a sort of frontier guard force against Tatar raids.