Oblasts of Ukraine
first level administrative division of Ukraine
An oblast (Ukrainian: область, romanized: oblast, pronounced [ˈɔblɐsʲtʲ] ; pl. області, oblasti), sometimes translated as region or province, is the main type of first-level administrative division of Ukraine. The country's territory is divided into 24 oblasts, as well as one autonomous republic and two cities with special status.
As Ukraine is a unitary state, oblasts do not have much legal scope of competence other than that which is established in the Ukrainian Constitution and devolved by law. Articles 140–146 of Chapter XI of the constitution deal directly with local authorities and their competence.
Oblasts are divided into raions, between three and ten each, following the July 2020 reform.
General characteristics
In Ukraine, the term oblast denotes a primary administrative division. Under the Russian Empire and into the 1920s, Ukraine was divided between several governorates. The term oblast was introduced in 1932 by Soviet authorities when the Ukrainian SSR was divided into seven oblasts, replacing the previous subdivision system based on okruhas and encompassing 406 raions (districts). The first oblasts were Vinnytsia Oblast, Kyiv Oblast, Odesa Oblast, Kharkiv Oblast, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Soon after that, in the summer of 1932, Donetsk Oblast was formed out of eastern parts of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts; in the fall of 1932 Chernihiv Oblast was formed on the border of Kyiv and Kharkiv oblasts.
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This entry incorporates text from “Oblasts of Ukraine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.