Who Was in Power
Step Into Ukrainian History
Scroll through the centuries, meet the rulers, and explore the moments that shaped Ukraine.
Scroll through the centuries, meet the rulers, and explore the moments that shaped Ukraine.
Explore the princes, kings, grand dukes, hetmans, emperors and presidents who ruled Ukrainian lands, and the realms that ruled beside them.
A Journey Through the Ages
Ukraine has been shaped by its position between the forest and the steppe, and between empires. From Kyiv, the princes of Rus’ built one of medieval Europe’s largest states and adopted Christianity in 988.
After the Mongol conquest, Galicia–Volhynia, Lithuania and Poland ruled Ukrainian lands, until the Cossacks rose under Bohdan Khmelnytsky in 1648 and created their own state, the Hetmanate.
Divided between the Russian and Austrian empires, Ukrainians built a modern national culture despite bans on their language, and fought for independence in 1917–1921 before most of the country became a Soviet republic.
After the Holodomor, the Second World War and Chernobyl, Ukraine declared independence in 1991. Two revolutions defended its democracy, and since 2014, and in full since 2022, it has resisted Russian invasion.
c. 1,400,000 BCE - AD 881
Early humans, Trypillian farmers, steppe horsemen, Greek colonists and finally the early Slavs shaped the lands between the Carpathians and the Don.
Ukraine holds some of Europe's oldest traces of early humans, the mammoth-bone dwellings of Ice Age hunters and the vast settlements of the Cucuteni–Trypillia culture. The steppe was home to peoples who helped domesticate the horse, followed by the Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians, while Greek cities such as Olbia and Chersonesus traded along the Black Sea. Goths and Huns passed through in late antiquity, and from the 6th century Slavic tribes settled the forest-steppe, with Kyiv emerging as the Polianians' centre under Khazar overlordship.
882 - 1240
From Kyiv, the Rurikid princes built one of medieval Europe's largest states, adopted Byzantine Christianity and created a lasting culture of law, letters and architecture.
Varangian princes of the Rurikid dynasty made Kyiv the centre of a trading and military state stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Olha, Sviatoslav and Volodymyr the Great expanded and consolidated it, and Volodymyr's baptism in 988 brought Rus' into the Byzantine Christian world. Under Yaroslav the Wise Kyiv gained Saint Sophia Cathedral, the Ruska Pravda law code and dynastic ties across Europe. Rivalries between princely branches later divided the realm into appanages, Kyiv was sacked in 1169, and the Mongol conquest of 1240 ended its greatness.
1240 - 1569
After the Mongol conquest, Galicia–Volhynia carried on the Rus' heritage in the west, before Lithuania and Poland divided the Ukrainian lands and the Crimean Khanate rose in the south.
Danylo of Galicia rebuilt a Ruthenian state in the west, took a royal crown from the pope in 1253 and founded Lviv. When his line died out in 1340, Poland and Lithuania fought over the inheritance: Galicia passed to the Polish crown, while the Grand Duchy of Lithuania absorbed Kyiv, Volhynia and Podillia, leaving much of Ruthenian law, language and Orthodox faith in place. In the south the Crimean Khanate became an Ottoman vassal and raided deep into the steppe, and on this dangerous frontier the first Cossack communities appeared below the Dnipro rapids.
1569 - 1764
Under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth the Cossacks rose to create their own state, the Hetmanate, which Russia gradually absorbed.
The Union of Lublin transferred Kyiv, Volhynia and Bratslav to the Polish crown, bringing new estates, serfdom and the religious tensions of the Union of Brest. Orthodox brotherhoods, the Ostroh Academy and the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium answered with a cultural revival, while the Zaporizhian Cossacks grew into a military power. In 1648 Bohdan Khmelnytsky led an uprising that created the Cossack Hetmanate; his 1654 agreement at Pereiaslav with Muscovy was followed by decades of civil war known as the Ruin. Ivan Mazepa's alliance with Sweden ended in defeat at Poltava in 1709, and Russia steadily curtailed the Hetmanate's autonomy.
1764 - 1917
Divided between the Russian and Austrian empires, Ukrainians built a modern national culture in the face of bans on their language.
Catherine II abolished the Hetmanate, destroyed the Zaporizhian Sich and annexed Crimea, opening the southern steppe to settlement and new ports such as Odesa. The partitions of Poland gave Galicia to Austria and Right-bank Ukraine to Russia. A national revival grew from Kotliarevsky's Eneida and Shevchenko's poetry, but the tsarist government banned Ukrainian publishing in 1863 and 1876, while Galicia under Austrian rule became a centre of Ukrainian schools, press and politics. The end of serfdom and the rise of coal and steel in the Donbas transformed society, and millions emigrated to the Americas.
1917 - 1921
The collapse of the empires brought Ukrainian statehood and years of war, ending with Ukraine divided between Soviet Russia and Poland.
After the February Revolution the Central Rada under Mykhailo Hrushevsky proclaimed the Ukrainian People's Republic and, in January 1918, its independence. Kyiv changed hands repeatedly: the Bolsheviks, the Germans and Pavlo Skoropadsky's Hetmanate, the Directory under Petliura, White armies and anarchists all fought over the country. In the west the West Ukrainian People's Republic was proclaimed in Lviv and formally united with the UPR in 1919, but lost Galicia to Poland. Petliura's alliance with Poland failed to hold Kyiv, and the Peace of Riga divided Ukrainian lands between Soviet Ukraine and Poland.
1922 - 1991
As a Soviet republic Ukraine endured famine, terror and the most destructive fighting of the Second World War before its people turned toward independence.
The 1920s policy of Ukrainization briefly encouraged Ukrainian culture, but Stalin's collectivization brought the Holodomor famine of 1932–1933 and the Great Terror destroyed much of the intelligentsia. In 1939 the Soviet Union annexed western Ukraine. Nazi occupation after 1941 brought the Holocaust, including the Babi Yar massacre, and fighting between German, Soviet and Ukrainian nationalist forces; in 1944 the Crimean Tatars were deported. Post-war Ukraine rebuilt as an industrial heartland of the USSR, while dissidents such as the Sixtiers and the Helsinki Group kept national and human rights alive. Chernobyl and glasnost fuelled the movement that declared sovereignty in 1990.
1991 - Present
Independent since 1991, Ukraine defended its democracy in two revolutions and has resisted Russian aggression since 2014.
Ukraine declared independence in August 1991 and confirmed it by referendum in December. It gave up its nuclear arsenal under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, adopted a constitution and a national currency, and weathered economic crisis and political scandal. The Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Euromaidan protests of 2013–2014 showed a society determined to choose its own European course. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and fomenting war in the Donbas, and in 2022 launched a full-scale invasion. Ukraine's resistance, from the defence of Kyiv to the liberation of Kherson, has been accompanied by its candidacy for membership of the European Union.
Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host
Ivan Briukhovetsky — Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host (Cossack Hetmanate, 27 June 1663 – 17 June 1668). pro-Muscovite faction, changed sides due to Truce of Andrusovo.
Ukraine’s legacy is old and hard-won: the heritage of Kyivan Rus’, a Cossack tradition of self-rule, a language and literature that survived imperial bans, and a long struggle for statehood that continues to shape Europe today.
Kyiv was the capital of one of medieval Europe’s largest states. Saint Sophia Cathedral, the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, the Primary Chronicle and the Ruska Pravda law code remain foundations of the cultures of Ukraine and its neighbours, and their meaning is still contested in history and politics.
The Zaporizhian Sich elected its leaders in open councils, and Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s Hetmanate became an early modern Ukrainian state. The Cossack ideal of freedom, and its limits for peasants and minorities, became central to Ukrainian national identity.
Pylyp Orlyk’s constitution of 1710 set out limits on the hetman’s power, an elected council and the separation of powers, decades before the Enlightenment constitutions of the West. The Universals of the Central Rada and the Constitution of 1996 continued this tradition.
The Ostroh Academy and the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy educated clergy and scholars across Eastern Europe. Kotliarevsky, Shevchenko and Lesia Ukrainka turned the Ukrainian vernacular into a modern literary language that survived the Valuev Circular, the Ems Ukaz and Soviet Russification.
Ukrainians have shared their land with Crimean Tatars, Jews, Poles, Russians, Greeks, Armenians, Germans and many others. Cities such as Lviv, Odesa and Kyiv grew out of this diversity, and the Orthodox, Greek Catholic, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim traditions all left their mark.
Divided for centuries between neighbouring empires, Ukrainians created states in 1648 and again in 1917–1921, before independence in 1991 finally lasted. That long struggle explains why sovereignty, borders and self-determination remain so central to Ukrainian politics.
The Holodomor, the Great Terror, the Holocaust including Babi Yar, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and Chernobyl brought catastrophe to Ukraine in the 20th century. Remembering these victims, and naming those responsible, remains a moral and political task.
From the Revolution on Granite in 1990 to the Orange Revolution and the Revolution of Dignity, Ukrainians repeatedly defended free elections and a European future. Since 2014, and on a vast scale since 2022, that civic spirit has sustained the country’s defence against Russian aggression.
