The oldest rocks in the region are part of the Ukrainian Shield and formed more than 2.5 billion years ago in the Archean eon of the Precambrian.
Ukraine was intermittently flooded as the crust downwarped during much of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic and early Cenozoic, before the formation of the Alps and Carpathian Mountains defined much of its current topography and tectonics.
These rocks, including plagioclase granite, basalt and gneiss, was reworked into granulite belts due to tectonic evolution in the Archean.
Tectonic forces had fractured the Archean basement rock into sutures, blocks, troughs and depressions by the start of the Proterozoic, although new folding began.
The evolution of the rock units in the Proterozoic produced the stable Ukrainian Shield, which was broken up further into horst and graben formations by the Baikalian orogeny.
Faults formed as the Alps began to build, together with the Carpathian Mountains, separating much of Ukraine from the Precarpathian Foredeep and Transcarpathian Depression.
Manganese ores are known from Oligocene rocks in the south slope of the Ukrainian shield and titanium is found in magmatic and alluvial deposits.