Kharkiv

Kharkiv Oblast is located in the east of Ukraine. The administrative centre is Kharkiv city.
The region borders Russia (Belgorod Region) to the north, Luhansk Region to the east, Donetsk Region to the southeast, Dnipropetrovsk Region to the southwest, Poltava Region to the west, and Sumy Region to the northwest. Kharkiv region is located 460 km from Kyiv and 670 km from Odesa Seaport.
Kharkiv region is administratively divided into 7 districts. A total of 17 cities, 61 urban-type settlements, and 1677 villages.
Kharkiv Oblast has a predominantly industrial economy, including engineering, metallurgy, industry, chemical production, and the food industry. It also has an important agricultural sector with 19,000 square kilometres of arable land (which is 5.9% of Ukraine’s total arable land area). In 2015, agricultural production increased significantly. There is also an aviation factory of space control systems in Kharkiv. It is a large centre for all branches of mechanical engineering, from large-scale production to microelectronics. There is also a gas field in the Kharkiv region, which is one of the largest in Ukraine.
Regional GDP in 2021 was 9.1 billion USD (6% of Ukraine’s GDP), FDI stock was 1 013 million USD (2% of Ukraine’s FDI stock), and export was 1.4 billion USD (3% of Ukraine’s export).
Industry specialization: mechanical engineering (agriculture, energy and aerospace industry), gas (the largest producer in Ukraine), IT (outsourcing), agriculture (production of flour, milk, butter, tobacco).
Natural resources of the region: huge reserves of gas and sand.
There are 32 universities and 5 technical schools in the region. The leading universities are the Kharkiv National University named after V. N. Kazarin, the Kharkiv National Medical University and the National Technical University “Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute”.
The unemployment rate in the region was 6.4% (average in Ukraine 9.9%) and the average salary was 370 USD (average in Ukraine 430 USD) in 2021.