Czech Republic–Ukraine relations are the foreign relations between the Czech Republic and Ukraine. Both countries established current diplomatic relations on 18 February, 1992. The Czech Republic has an embassy in Kyiv and Ukraine has an embassy in Prague.
Czechoslovak newspaper Svoboda, co-founded by Jaroslav Hašek, was issued in Kyiv in 1917 and Taganrog, capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, in 1918.[1]
During the interwar era, the current Ukrainian Zakarpattia Oblast was part of Czechoslovakia, before being ceded to Hungary in 1938.[2] It was eventually annexed by the Soviet Union and included within the Ukrainian SSR following World War II.
See main article: article and Czechs in Ukraine. Czechs migrated to the territory of modern-day Ukraine in the 19th century. Following the Ukrainian independence of 1991, over 1,800 Czechs left Ukraine for the Czech Republic by 1993.[3]
See main article: articles and Ukrainians in the Czech Republic. Immigration to the Czech Republic from Ukraine, primarily for economic reasons, began to grow significantly in the early 1990s following the end of the Cold War. In 1991, 8,500 Ukrainian citizens were recorded as living on Czech territory, with that number increasing to 132,481, according to the Czech Statistical Office. This made Ukrainians the largest expatriate group within the Czech Republic, comprising 30% of the country's total international population.[4]
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the number of Ukrainians within the country increased drastically as thousands fled the war. As of July 31, 2023, over 357,000 refugees from Ukraine have been given temporary protection status within the Czech Republic, making the country the third largest destination for Ukrainians in the European Union.[5]