Ukraine

Saint Sophia's cathedral in Kyiv, built in the eleventh century on the Constantinople model, marks the entry of the Eastern Slavs into Byzantine civilisation. The Mohyla Academy, founded in 1615, was the first higher education institution in Orthodox Europe to teach in Latin and Greek.

Kievan Rus', founded in the ninth century, adopted Byzantine Christianity in 988 under Vladimir: a decision that durably oriented all of Eastern Europe. The Mongol invasion of 1240 dispersed that heritage.

Ukrainian lands then passed to Lithuania, Poland, the Ottoman Empire and Russia. The seventeenth-century Cossack hetmanate, with Pylyp Orlyk's Constitution of 1710, was an original political experiment.

The twentieth century was one of engineered famines — the Holodomor of 1932-1933 — the Holocaust by bullets and two occupations. Independent in 1991, Ukraine experienced the Orange Revolution in 2004 and Euromaidan in 2013-2014, followed by the annexation of Crimea. The full-scale invasion of 24 February 2022 earned it Union candidate status four months later.