Ukraine, Divided into 24 Oblasts, 136 Raions, and 1,469 Hromadas

Ukrainian news reports often use a phrasing like “such-and-such hromada, in such-and-such raion, in such-and-such oblast.” Oblast (область), raion (район), hromada (громада, community). These three tiers were substantially reorganized in 2020. Ukraine today is divided into 24 oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the specially designated cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol; within these are 136 raions, and, in the 24 oblasts alone, 1,469 hromadas.

The division set out in the constitution

Article 133 of the Constitution of Ukraine defines the system of administrative-territorial units as “the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, oblasts, raions, cities, city districts, selyshche (settlements), and villages,” and names each of the 24 oblasts individually. It states that the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol have special status, the content of which is defined by separate law.

Local governance runs along two lines. One is state administration: oblast and raion state administrations are established, whose heads are appointed by the President based on a proposal from the Cabinet of Ministers (Article 118). The other is local self-government by residents. Article 140 defines local self-government as the right of “residents of a village, or a hromada of residents of several villages voluntarily united, of a selyshche, and of a city” to decide local matters for themselves, and establishes village, selyshche, and city councils as its bodies. Oblast and raion councils, meanwhile, are positioned as bodies representing interests common to the hromadas within them.

Article 1 of the Law “On Local Self-Government in Ukraine” (1997, No. 280/97-VR) likewise defines a hromada as “residents settled and bound together within the boundary of a village, selyshche, or city, or a voluntary union of residents of several villages, selyshche, or cities with a single administrative center.” A hromada is written first and foremost as a body of people, and only then acquires a territory.

2020: redrawing the map

The current division dates from 2020. On 12 June 2020, at an extraordinary session, the Cabinet of Ministers issued orders determining the administrative center of the hromadas within each of the 24 oblasts and approving their territories (Cabinet orders No. 707-r through No. 730-r). This was based on the transitional provisions of the Law on Local Self-Government, under which, until a law on administrative-territorial units is enacted, the Cabinet decides the administrative centers and approves the territories of hromadas.

A month later, on 17 July, the Verkhovna Rada adopted Resolution No. 807-IX, “On the Establishment and Abolition of Raions,” establishing 136 new raions and abolishing the previous 490 (both figures include Crimea). The boundaries of the new raions are defined as the outer boundaries of the hromadas contained within them (paragraph 2 of the same resolution). In other words, the hromadas were decided first, and the raions were determined as combinations of them.

Two days earlier, on 15 July, the Verkhovna Rada had adopted a resolution (No. 795-IX) setting 25 October 2020 as the date of local elections. The councils and heads of the new hromadas were chosen in this election. However, the same resolution states that no election would be held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol, temporarily occupied by Russia, or in some raions, cities, selyshche and villages of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, and that no election would be held for the oblast councils of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts either.

The number of raions and hromadas by oblast

The list of hromadas for the 24 oblasts is in the annexes to the 2020 Cabinet orders, and on 26 November 2025 the annexes for all 24 oblasts were reissued in revised form. Counting from the current version, there are 1,469 hromadas in total, made up of 615 village hromadas, 443 selyshche hromadas, and 411 city hromadas.

The number of raions ranges from 3 to 8 depending on the oblast. Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts have the most, at 8 each, while Ternopil, Khmelnytskyi, and Chernivtsi oblasts have the fewest, at 3. For hromadas, Odesa oblast has the most, at 91, and Luhansk oblast the fewest, at 37.

The villages and selyshche within a hromada

A single hromada often contains a number of villages and selyshche. The lists in the annexes give, for each hromada, the settlement that serves as its administrative center and the names of the councils (such as village councils) that existed before consolidation. For villages far from the administrative center, the Law on Local Self-Government establishes the post of starosta (староста). A starosta is approved by the council for each “starosta district” within a hromada, after open consultation with residents (Article 54-1).

The types of settlements were also reorganized in 2023. Law No. 3285-IX (28 July 2023) sets the categories of settlement as city, selyshche, and village, defining a city as a settlement of 10,000 or more people, a selyshche as 5,000 or more, and a village as under 5,000 (a settlement that was already a city before the law took effect remains a city). The former category of “urban-type settlement” (селище міського типу) was moved into selyshche (селище) when this law took effect. The abbreviation “с-ще” attached to settlement names in current lists stands for this selyshche category.

Crimea’s 10 raions

Resolution No. 807-IX also established 10 raions in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea: Bakhchysarai, Bilohirsk, Dzhankoi, Yevpatoria, Kerch, Kurman, Perekop, Simferopol, Feodosia, and Yalta. The names of the raions and their administrative centers use the forms set by Verkhovna Rada Resolution No. 1352-VIII of 12 May 2016, which renamed places in Crimea under the law condemning the communist regime. Krasnohvardiiske raion became Kurman raion, and the city of Krasnoperekopsk became Yani Kapu.

The provisions on Crimea’s raions and the 2016 renaming were originally to take effect “when the temporarily occupied territory returns to Ukraine’s jurisdiction.” Law No. 3334-IX of 23 August 2023 changed this, so that they took effect together with that law’s entry into force (7 September 2023). The same law also ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to approve the administrative centers and territories of Crimea’s hromadas within one month.

Oblasts, raions and hromadas under wartime

Under Presidential Decree No. 68/2022 of 24 February 2022, the state administrations of the 24 oblasts and the city of Kyiv became oblast (city) military administrations, and raion state administrations became raion military administrations. Local elections are also banned under martial law (Article 19 of the Law on the Legal Regime of Martial Law). A hromada whose council or head cannot carry out their duties may have a settlement military administration installed (Article 4 of the same law). The martial-law system is covered in detail in what martial law in Ukraine does, and does not, stop.

The government keeps a list, at the level of hromadas and settlements, of where fighting is taking place and where territory is occupied. A list set out by Order No. 376 (28 February 2025) of the Ministry for Communities’ and Territories’ Development records, for each oblast, raion, hromada, and settlement name and settlement code, the category — “an area where fighting may occur,” “an area where fighting is taking place,” or “territory temporarily occupied by Russia” — along with its start and end dates. The version current as of 23 September 2026 covers Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Sumy, Kharkiv, Kherson, and Chernihiv oblasts, the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, the city of Sevastopol, and the city of Kyiv. The list is amended frequently — more than 10 times in 2025 alone.

The settlement codes used in the list come from the “Classifier of Administrative-Territorial Units and Territories of Hromadas” (Кодифікатор), consisting of “UA” followed by a 17-digit number. The annexes to the 2020 Cabinet orders also attach this code to each hromada’s administrative center. When a place name’s spelling varies, this code can confirm whether it refers to the same place.