Geography
The ethnic Russian population is significant throughout Ukraine ranging from merely a notable fraction of an overall population in the west, to a significant minority in the center and growing in number even further to the east and south.
In the west and the center of the country, the percentage of the Russian population is higher in the cities and industrial centers and much less in the overwhelmingly Ukrainophone rural areas. Due to the traditionally high presence of the Russians in the cities, as well as for the historic reasons, most of the large cities in the center and the south-east of the country (including Kiev where Russians amount to 13.1% of the population) remain largely Russophone to this day.
The traditionally mixed Russo-Ukrainian populated territories are mainly the historic Novorossiya (New Russia) and Slobozhanshchina (Sloboda Ukraine) that are now both split between modern Russia and Ukraine. Russians also constitute the majority of the population of Crimea, the peninsula now in the very south of Ukraine that was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 by the decision of the Soviet government.
Read more about this topic: Russians In Ukraine
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