The Ukrainian landscape consists mostly of fertile plains, or steppes, and plateaus, crossed by rivers such as the
Dnieper, Seversky Donets,
Dniester and the Southern Buh as they flow south into the Black Sea and the smaller Sea of Azov. To the southwest the delta of the Danube forms the border with
Romania. The country's only mountains are the
Carpathian Mountains in the west, of which the highest is the
Hora Hoverla at 2061 metres, and those in the
Crimean peninsula, in the extreme south along the coast.
Kyiv (Kiev) is the capital city. Other major cities are Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Kharkiv, Lviv and
Odessa (one of the largest ports in the Black Sea). The Crimea is an Autonomous Republic within
Ukraine.
