Chernivtsi Oblast

Chernivtsi Oblast is an oblast, the Ukrainian term for a province, in western Ukraine, made up of the northern parts of the historical regions of Bukovina and Bessarabia. It has international borders with Romania and Moldova and covers 8,097 square kilometres, which makes it the smallest oblast in Ukraine by both area and population, with 890,457 people at the 2022 estimate. Its administrative center is the city of Chernivtsi. The landscape runs from the Carpathian Mountains and their foothills to a broad, partly forested plain between the Dniester and Prut rivers. The oblast was created on 7 August 1940 after the Soviet occupation of Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, from territory that had belonged to the Kingdom of Romania.