Kyiv (Kiev) is the capital city of Ukraine. It is one of the most beautiful and oldest cities of Eastern Europe and has played a pivotal role in the development of the East Slavic civilization as well as the modern Ukrainian nation. Founded 1500 years ago, Kyiv is also the administrative centre of Kyiv region.
Kyiv is the largest city in Ukraine and is situated on the picturesque banks of a river called Dnieper. Half of its territory is occupied by parks and gardens. As one of the biggest cities of Europe, Kyiv has a population of 3,14 million and occupies an area of more than 840 square kilometres.
Kyiv is a leading industrial and commercial centre of the country. Its major industries include food processing industries, metallurgical industry, machine manufacturing industry, chemicals producing industries, building materials industries and textiles industries. The development of the economy of Ukrainian gave an impulse to the business activities of the city. There are a lot of new office centres, banks, trade exhibition centres and other commercial enterprises springing up in the city these days.
Kyiv is known as the greenest city. The area of the green zone covers 43,600 hectares (making up 168 sq.m per one resident) and more than half of which is taken up by woods, public gardens, two botanical gardens, parks and tree-lined boulevards. At the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference 2009, Kyiv was the only CIS city to be inscribed into the TOP 30 European Green City Index.
Kyiv is served by a very good transportation network. Main railways and all-weather roads link Kyiv to Moscow, Kharkiv and the Donetsk Basin, Southern and Western Ukraine, and Poland. Within Kyiv city itself, there is an efficient subway, railway and bus services. The Dnieper River is navigable about nine months of the year, and Kyiv’s Boryspil airport operates flights to other Ukrainian cities and cities in Europe, Asia, North America and other parts of the world.
Kyiv has lots of institutions of higher learning. Below are the most popular ones.