Ukraine’s 27 Regions: How Many Oblasts, and Which Is Biggest?

Ukraine does not have states; it has 27 first-level regions: 24 oblasts (provinces), the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the special-status cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol. The largest oblast is Odesa Oblast on the Black Sea at 33,296 km², the smallest is Chernivtsi Oblast at 8,094 km², and the capital, Kyiv, is a separate unit of 839 km² with 2.95 million people in January 2022, even though it is also the administrative centre of the Kyiv Oblast that surrounds it. Russia has occupied Crimea and Sevastopol since 2014 and holds parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts; Ukraine and most states do not recognise its claims to them. Here are all 27, with areas and the 2022 population estimates that Wikipedia gives for each.

The 24 oblasts held about 39.2 million people between them in these 2022 estimates, made just before Russia’s full-scale invasion; millions have since been displaced, so treat every population here as a pre-war baseline. Below the oblasts sit 136 raions (districts), created in the reform of 17 July 2020 that cut the number of raions from 490 and folded the former cities of regional significance into them, and below those 1,469 hromadas, or municipalities, as of October 2023. Each oblast has an elected council, chosen every four years, and a state administration whose head is appointed by the President of Ukraine.

Odesa Oblast, the Largest at 33,296 km²

Odesa Oblast in the far south-west covers about 5.5% of Ukraine’s 603,550 km². It is mostly flat steppe on the Black Sea Lowland, cut by the Dniester estuary; to the south the Danube marks part of the border with Romania. Its Black Sea coast is lined with sandy beaches, estuaries and lagoons, and its centre, the port city of Odesa, is the third-largest city in the country.

Odesa reached its present size in 1954, when it absorbed Izmail Oblast, the Budjak region of southern Bessarabia that the Soviet Union had taken from Romania in 1940. With 91 hromadas, it also has more municipalities than any other oblast. Its borders have been redrawn by war before: during the Second World War most of the land between the Dniester and the Southern Bug was placed under Romanian administration as the Transnistria Governorate, with Odesa as its capital.

The next three are almost exactly equal. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast covers 31,901 km², Chernihiv Oblast in the forested north 31,851 km² and Kharkiv Oblast 31,402 km², a spread of less than 500 km² between them. Zhytomyr Oblast, west of Kyiv, completes the top five at 29,819 km².

Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kyiv City: the Most Populous Regions

On paper the most populous oblast is Donetsk, with 4,157,000 people in the 2022 estimate on 26,506 km². In 2013 it held about 4.43 million, roughly 10% of all Ukrainians, and it was both the most urbanised and the most densely settled oblast. Its population is concentrated in the big industrial cities of the Donbas and the villages around them. That figure describes a region that no longer exists in that form. Since 2014 the city of Donetsk has been outside Ukrainian control, the oblast administration works from Kramatorsk, and by August 2025 Russia controlled roughly three-quarters of the oblast.

Second is Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with 3,214,000 people, centred on the city of Dnipro. The city dropped its Soviet-era name, Dnipropetrovsk, in 2016 as part of decommunisation, but because the oblasts are named in the constitution, changing an oblast name is a slow process, and as of 2024 the oblast still formally kept the old one. Kirovohrad Oblast is in the same position: its centre was renamed Kropyvnytskyi in 2016.

The single most populous city in Ukraine is not inside any oblast. Kyiv, with 2,952,301 residents in January 2022, the seventh-most populous city in Europe, is a city with special status on the same level as the oblasts. It straddles the Dnieper in the north-centre of the country.

Kharkiv Oblast (2,683,000), Lviv Oblast in the west (2,515,000) and Odesa Oblast (2,395,000) follow. Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine’s easternmost, had 2,145,000; as in Donetsk, its administration moved out of the regional centre, to Sievierodonetsk, after 2014.

Chernivtsi Oblast, 8,094 km², and Two Cities Smaller Still

Chernivtsi Oblast in the south-west is the smallest oblast by both area and population: 8,094 km², about 1.3% of Ukrainian territory, and 897,000 people in 2022. It is made up of the northern parts of the historical regions of Bukovina and Bessarabia and borders Romania and Moldova. In the city of Chernivtsi, the former Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans, built between 1864 and 1882 to designs by the Czech architect Josef Hlávka, became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011. With only three raions, it ties with Ternopil and Khmelnytskyi for the fewest.

The next smallest oblasts are also in the west: Zakarpattia at 12,772 km², beyond the Carpathians, and Ternopil at 13,817 km². Zakarpattia and Volyn are the two oblasts not named after their centres: they keep the names of the historical regions of Transcarpathia and Volhynia, while their centres are Uzhhorod and Lutsk.

Only Sevastopol, at 864 km², and Kyiv, at 839 km², are smaller first-level units than Chernivtsi Oblast.

Cherkasy Oblast, 1954: the Newest Oblast on the Map

The oblast system is a Soviet creation. Under the Russian Empire, Ukraine was divided into governorates, and from 1923 to 1930 Soviet Ukraine used a transitional system of okruhas. Oblasts arrived in 1932, beginning with Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa and Vinnytsia, and adding Donetsk on 17 July and Chernihiv on 15 October that year. In 1937–1938 Mykolaiv, Poltava, Zhytomyr and Kamianets-Podilsk oblasts were carved out, and Donetsk was split into Stalino and Voroshylovhrad. In 1939–1940 came Kirovohrad, Sumy and Zaporizhzhia, followed by the western oblasts formed after the Soviet annexations: Lviv, Volyn, Rivne, Tarnopol, Stanislav (now Ivano-Frankivsk), Drohobych, Chernivtsi and Izmail.

After the Second World War came Kherson Oblast and, on 22 January 1946, Zakarpattia, formed once Czechoslovakia gave up its claim to Subcarpathian Ruthenia. In a regional referendum held alongside the 1991 independence vote, 78% of its voters backed autonomy for Zakarpattia, but the oblast was never granted autonomous status. The newest of today’s 24 is Cherkasy Oblast, created on 7 January 1954 by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. The Dnieper splits it into a larger hilly west bank and a flatter east bank, and at 20,891 km² it is the 17th largest of the 24 oblasts, or 18th if Crimea is counted. The map was then simplified: Izmail Oblast went into Odesa in 1954 and Drohobych into Lviv in 1959. Old names were dropped in turn: Kamianets-Podilsk became Khmelnytskyi in 1954, Stalino became Donetsk in 1961, Stanislav became Ivano-Frankivsk in 1962, and Voroshylovhrad, which switched names back and forth from 1958, reverted to Luhansk for good at the end of the Soviet era.

Crimea, Sevastopol and the Four Oblasts Russia Claimed in 2022

Crimea joined the Ukrainian map in 1954 too, when the Soviet leadership transferred Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. In 1991 it became the Crimean ASSR again, and after a dispute with Kyiv in 1992–1995 over its powers, the 1998 constitution of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea set out its present status. It is the only Ukrainian region with its own constitution. It was also the only one, apart from Sevastopol, where ethnic Russians formed a majority: 58% at the 2001 census, against 24% Ukrainians and about 12% Crimean Tatars. Stalin’s government had deported the Crimean Tatars to Central Asia in 1944, and they began returning after the Soviet collapse. Sevastopol was administered separately from the surrounding oblast even in Soviet times, and is the second city with special status.

Russian forces occupied Sevastopol and the rest of the peninsula in February 2014, and Russia declared their annexation on 18 March 2014. On 27 March 2014 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 68/262 by 100 votes to 11, affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders; 58 states abstained. On 30 September 2022 Russia declared the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, although it did not fully control any of them. Under Ukrainian law, and in the view of most governments, all 27 regions remain part of Ukraine.

For a closer look at the peninsula, read our Crimean Peninsula geography guide; for how the governors and oblast councils fit into the state, see the government of Ukraine; and to see how all 27 regions add up against other European countries, find out how big Ukraine is.