Development of the administrative divisions of Ukraine
In 1918, there was a not fully realized territorial administrative reform in the Ukrainian People's Republic, where the country was divided into zemlias, volosts, and hromadas.
[3][4]Just before World War II, Hungary with the help from Poland occupied Carpatho-Ukraine that was to secede from the falling apart Czechoslovakia after the Munich agreement plus some additional territories of Slovakia.
In the fall of 1938, the southwestern territories of Subcarpathian Rus including the cities of Uzhhorod, Berehove, and Mukacheve were yielded to the Kingdom of Hungary.
Kárpátalja unlike most of the country, however, had a special administrative system with the intention of it being governed by the Ruthenian minority population.
Within Germany Ukraine also was divided between the General Government (Krakau), Reichskommisariat (centered in Rivne), and Wehrmacht administration closer to the Eastern Front.
Western Ukraine around Lviv was part of the General Government as Distrikt Galizien which was added to four other existing districts with the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Romania liberated the south-western part of Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic from the foreign rule, more specifically the area which today constitutes Odesa Oblast eastward of the Dniester and southern Vinnytsia Oblast, land inhabited mostly by Romanians a few centuries ago.
Beside a Ukrainian-Polish border exchange on January 22, 1946, the Zakarpattia Oblast was also created out of newly acquired Czechoslovakia territories, where Carpatho-Ukraine had been proclaimed just before World War II.
Before the fall of Soviet Union in 1992 the Ukrainian SSR consisted of 25 oblasts and two cities of republican subordination, Kyiv and Sevastopol.
On February 12, 1991, the Crimean oblast was restored to its pre-WWII status of autonomous Soviet socialist republic following a referendum.
[citation needed] After the start of the war in Donbas in the oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk in April 2014, Ukrainian government forces fought to hold territory against separatist militias with a significant level of Russian manpower and military support.
About a third of the area of the two Donbas oblasts remain under the de facto control of Russian-supported self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics.
In these cities and raions where the respective local governments cannot exercise their constitutional powers, Ukraine created civil–military administrations in February 2015.
New third-level hromadas have taken over most tasks of the raions (education, healthcare, sport facilities, culture, and social welfare).
