Bird's Eye Views of the Ukraine

Take an aerial tour of the great Eastern European nation of the Ukraine in this phenomenal reel by contributor Tempostudios.  You will be carried along for bird's eye views of some of the most spectacular sights of this fascinating country.  Highlights include some amazing shots of the capital city Kiev and some of its great cultural and historical treasures such as St. Andrews Church and the massive Rodina Mat statue overlooking the city, as well as some aerials of the fabled Ukrainian countryside.  This film was a Drone Video of the Week nominee in March, 2019.

While Ukraine has many cultural and historical ties to Russia, both the landscape of the country and its people are quite distinct.  It is a country of large cities like Kiev, spectacular peaks of the Carpathian Mountain range in the southwestern part of the countries, and gorgeous Black Sea coastlines in its far south.  Contributor Anthony Esteban Gonsales does an outstanding job of using a drone to create a deeply moving aerial portrait of this amazing country.

Upon gaining its independence (again) following in the early 1990's, Ukraine became one of the largest countries in Europe, comparable to France in both population and geographic extent.  It's a land of large cities, countless smaller towns, and diverse natural scenery.  Contributor Vasylkevych flew a drone over the length and width of this amazing country to create a remarkable aerial portrait of the Ukraine, which was produced in connection with an article in a major travel magazine and website.

The most prominent landmark in the Ukrainian capital Kiev is the Rodina Mat, a giant steel monument overlooking the Dneiper River.  The statue the USSR's victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 against Nazi Germany.  While recent laws have required many Soviet era monuments to be destroyed, WW II monuments are exempted.  Here is Tempostudio's drone video of the immense statue, now is seen as recognition of Ukraine's immense contribution to victory.

Berdyansk is a Ukrainian port the Sea of Azov, a large and extremely shallow body of water which is an extension of the Black Sea.  While not as large as the port of Odessa further to the west, Berdyansk is nevertheless an important shipping center in the southern Ukraine, which otherwise lacks access to the sea.  In this video, contributor Daniilsamoilenko uses a DJI Phantom 3 drone to do an epic selfie pull out shot revealing the red sand beach and the blue sea water behind it.  

Vinnitsa (Vinnytsia) is a mid-sized city in the Podillia region of north central Ukraine, although at various times in its history it's been part of Poland.  In this video, contributor Alpa Karagulle used a drone to capture the water tower which figures prominently in the cityscape of Vinnitsa.  The stylized video provides a great look at not only the tower but also the town itself, a very well preserved example of a medium sized Eastern European city. 

The Ukrainian capital Kiev is closely tied to the Dneiper River on which it sits.   Kiev sits roughly midway down the 2.2k km (1.36k mi.) river, Europe's fourth longest .  The Dneiper rises near Smolensk in western Russia and empties into the Black Sea to the south.  Along the way, it provides enough hydropower to generate about 10% of the Ukraine's electricity needs.  In this video, you'll get a nice bird's eye view of the mighty river in winter, compliments of contributor Anthony Esteban Gonsales.

The Carpathian Mountains of Central and Eastern Europe form an arc which juts eastward starting around the Austrian capital city of Vienna.  The portion of the arc where the range turns southward (towards Romania) sits in the southwestern portion of the Ukraine.   This is the area which you'll see in this marvelous aerial video by contributor Antonio Esteban Gonzales, specifically the area from Yasinya to Lake Dogyaska.

Berdyansk is a port city in the southeastern Ukraine.  It sits on the Sea of Azov, which is an extension of the Black Sea.  In this highly cinematic video, contributor Antonio Esteban Gonsales flew a DJI to fly over a lighthouse on the sea during the depth of winter.  The highly stylized video does an impressive job of capturing the bleak but beautiful expanse of the semi frozen water, part of what was once the most important waterway in the world.

While its nickname "the breakbasket of Europe" associates Ukraine with wheat, it's sometimes forgotten is that the country has an equally close connection to another critical commodity: coal.  The Ukraine is one of the leading coal producers in Europe, and in the Soviet era was the largest source of coal within the USSR.  Arsen Poshotian created this beautiful drone video of the heart of the Ukrainian coal mining industry in the Donets River Basin (aka the "Donbas") in the eastern part of the country.

The southwestern corner of the Ukraine presents a radically different landscape from most of the rest of the country.  Here the Carpathian Mountains swing from an east-west axis to a north-south orientation, in the process covering three of the country's oblasts (provinces) with its gentle peaks.  The heart of this area is Bukovel, which features some of the country's most spectacular scenery as well as its busiest ski resort.  Check it out from this beautiful drone video, taken during the golden Autumn.  

Ivana Kupala is an ancient Eastern European festival held in mid-summer.  It is observed in many areas of Eastern Europe, namely in parts of the Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, and Russia.  Tied to the summer solstice, it occurs the night of July 6/7 which correspondes to June 23/24 on the Gregorian calendar. Contributor Valerii Iavtushenko flew a drone over an Ivana Kupula celebration in the Ukraine to make this amazing aerial video.  

Here's a bird's eye look at what is generally considered to be the Ukraine's most famous castle.  Palanok Castles (also called Mukachevo Castle) is situated in the Zakarpattia oblast, the southwesternmost province of the country.  Sitting atop a volcanic hill near the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the castle dates to the 14th century.  Fortified in several stages, it was used as a pan-European prison following the fall of the Bastille in Paris during the early days of the French Revolution. 

The Ukraine was the site of the worst disaster of the Atomic Energy Age.  In April, 1986, a malfunction in one of the light water reactors at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant caused the first Level 7 Event on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the only such event prior to the  Fukushima accident in 2011.  The near-meltdown caused catastrophic damage to the surrounding countryside.  In this video by Aerozond, you'll get an aerial view of the Exclusion Zone contaminated area.  

Behold this aerial video of one of the most well known castles in the Ukraine.  Contributor Martini flew a drone over Pidhirtsi Castle, which is situated in the oblast of Lviv in the western part of the country.  The castle was constructed in the 17th century, at a time when the western part of what is now Ukraine was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  The castle was near the front during much of World War I, and shortly thereafter saw fighting during the Polish Civil War.

4K Aerial Photography created this beautiful drone video of Kharkov, the second largest city in the Ukraine.  Lying more or less due east from the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev, Kharkov is the most important industrial city in the country.  Founded as a fortress, the city was the site of multiple bloody battles in World War II (the Great Patriotic War) and it saw thousands of its citizens starve to death.  In this video, you'll get a bird's eye view of the great city in the depths of the Ukrainian winter.  

Creator Vasylkevych created this stunning drone video of a now-abandoned military base in the Carpathian Mountains of southwestern Ukraine.  "Pamirs" served as an air-defense base for the Soviet Union, of which the Ukraine was part for most of the 20th century.  It's located atop Hutyn Tomnatyk, a 2k meter (about 6.6k ft.) peak of the Chornohora region.  Upon the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, hundreds of military bases in the former Soviet Republics were abandoned.  

Lviv is the largest city in the western part of the Ukraine, and the seventh largest overall in this Eastern European country.  Prior to World War II, Lviv was part of Poland, whose borders were shifted to the west as part of the postwar settlement putting Lviv in what was then the USSR.  While the inhabitants of the city suffered untold horrors during the war, the city center itself was left largely intact.  In this video by YoungPilot, you'll get a great bird's eye view of this important cultural city.  

While much of the Ukraine is part of the Eurasian Steppe, its southwestern corner is covered by a portion of the Carpathian Mountains range.  These graceful forested mountains provide some of the most spectacular scenery of Eastern Europe.  In this video, you'll get a bird's eye view of the area around Dzembroyna.  The beautiful town enjoys the distinction of being the highest village in the entire country.  It's in the Ivano-Frankivsk province, not far from the Romanian border.  

Contributor IvanUA made the most of an unplanned detour to create this beautiful drone video of the Zhytomyr Oblast in the Ukraine.  This province sits in the north central part of the Eastern European country, along the border with Belarus to the north.  The oblast (province) was the subject of ongoing struggles between the Russian and Polish/Lithuanian Empires before Poland was eventually partitioned out of existence at the end of the 18th century.  

While most of the Ukraine is flat, its southwestern corner is covered in medium sized mountains.   Here can be found the country's tallest mountain: Mt. Hoverla, which stands 2,060 meters (almost 6.8k ft.) above sea level.  Hoverla is part of the Beskids Mountains, a subrange of the great Carpathian chain which extends across portions of central, eastern, and southeastern Europe.  In this video, you'll get a bird's eye view of Mt. Hoverla, compliments of contributor Nebomriy.

The Cossacks are a semi-nomadic people from southern Russia and the southeastern portion of the Ukraine, in the valleys of the great rivers of the region.  There is a fair amount of disagreement as to their origins in about the 13th-14th centuries; the areas from which they emerged were invasion zones from the Eurasian steppe for centuries and there had been much ethnic intermixing as a result.  In this video, contributor Bezha27 uses a drone to tell a story about the origins of these proud people.  

The Motherland Monument (Rodina Mat) is an immense statue in Kiev, Ukraine.  Part of the Museum of the History of the Ukraine in World War II, the statue is a memorial to the many millions of Ukrainians who died during the Great Patriotic War (as World War II is known in the former Soviet Union).  In this video, contributor Alp Karagulle used a drone to create a stunning aerial perspective of this monument, which is still standing after most Soviet-era statues have been removed.  

St. Andrews Church is one of the most important in Kiev, a city known in part for its churches and monasteries.  It was constructed atop a prominent hill in the middle of the 18th century.  The church commemorates St. Andrew, who is alleged to have visited the site of the city on the Dneiper River in the first century AD.  It continued to hold services even during the worst period of Stalinist religious repression in the 1930's.  Today the church is considered one of the top 2-3 tourist spots in the city.  

Check out this beautiful drone video from a scene on the frozen Black Sea in the Ukraine in Eastern Europe, compliments of contributor aeroodessa.  The subject is a lighthouse off the coast of Odessa, the Ukraine's main southern city and the largest port on this inland sea after after Constanta in Romania.  Odessa lies in the northwestern corner of the sea, where temperatures are cold enough to cause substantial blocks of ice to form in the winter months.  

Contributor Valerii Iavtushenko created this beautiful drone video of Poltava, an important city in the Ukraine.  It's the capital of the eponymously named province, which is situated in the east-central part of the country.  The city is situated on the Vorskla River, a major tributary of the mighty Dneiper River.  Poltava dates to the 12th century.  It once had a substantial Jewish population, most of whom were killed in the Holocaust during World War II when Poltava was occupied by Nazi Germany.    

Contributor Drozd used a DJI Mavic Pro drone to create this stunning early-morning aerial video of a Ukrainian Castle.  Svirzh Castle is a structure which originally dates to the 15th century.  It is situated in the Lviv Oblast (province), which is in the far western part of the country.  This is the part of Ukraine which historically was part of Poland and was ceded to the Ukraine (then part of the USSR) after World War II.  The castle spent several centuries in a ruined state before being restored in the 20th century.  

Check out this haunting but fascinating drone video from the scene of one of history's greatest industrial accidents, compliments of David.Haring.  The northern Ukrainian city of Pripyat was built in the 1970's in connection with the construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.  When the plant's #4 reactor core exploded on April 26, 1986, the city's 50,000 inhabitants were evacuated.  The disaster is credited with thousands of cancer deaths and contributed to the downfall of the USSR in 1991.

The Sea of Azov is a northeastern extension of the Black Sea, shared by the Ukraine and Russia.  Fed by two of the most important rivers in Eastern Europe (the Don and Kuban), it's the shallowest sea in the world - its average depth is only 1-14 meters (3-45 ft.) depending on the season and river intake.  In this video, you will get a bird's eye view of the frozen Azov Sea, compliments of contributor danielsamoilenko.  It was filmed around the Ukrainian port of Berdyansk.  

Contributor and drone pilot Tempostudio created this drone video of Dnipro, the fourth largest city of the Ukraine.  As the name suggests, the city lies on the banks of the Dneiper River, the country's most important waterway.  It is situated in the great eastern bend of the river, about 400 km (around 240 mi.) southeast of Kiev.  The city became critical to the military-industrial complex of the USSR during Soviet rule, and continues to be one the country's most important manufacturing centers. 

Check out this drone video of a well-known castle in the western Ukraine.  It's called Kamianets-Podilskyi Castle, and it's located in the historical region of Podolia that covered parts of western modern-day Ukraine and parts of Moldova.  The castle was built in the 14th century, when the region (indeed much of Eastern Europe) was under the control of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.  It later became important to the outer defenses of the successor prot-state, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Here's a nice aerial mini-tour of the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, compliments of aeroodessa.  It's the city's third most populous city (after Kiev and Kharkov) and the home of its main port on the Black Sea.  Nicknamed the Pearl of the Black Sea, Odessa was established as a Greek trading outpost during the Antiquity, and successively came under the control of (among others) the Golden Horde, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, and the USSR.

Take a look at this excellent 60 second drone video showing the landscapes of the heart of the Ukraine.  Apart from the corner of the country which is covered by the Carpathian Mountains, most of this giant land is covered by the great Eastern European Plain.  This great flat expanse is interrupted by the great cities which dot this country of over 40 million, as well as areas of forests and lakes.  Much of it though is under agricultural cultivation, giving rise to the Ukraine's nickname: the Breadbasket of Europe.