In 1994, 400,000 people of Ukrainian descent lived in Brazil, 80% (or approximately 350,000) of whom lived in a compact region approximately 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 sq mi) in size (an area slightly smaller than Trinidad and Tobago), in the hilly south central part of the state of Paraná in southern Brazil.

"[4][5] Smaller numbers of Ukrainians have settled in São Paulo, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul, Pernambuco, and Paraíba.

[7] Seventy percent of Brazil's Ukrainians live in agricultural communities known as "colonies" where they tend crops such as wheat, rye, buckwheat, rice, black beans, and erva mate, a local type of tea.

[3] These colonies are isolated from modern areas of Brazil's economy and from non-Ukrainians, and in many respects closely resemble Galician (Western Ukrainian) villages of the 19th century.

[11] During a period of time known as the "Brazilian fever", between 1895 and 1897 more than 20,000 small farmers and landless peasants from Galicia, a region now in western Ukraine, came to Brazil after having been lured by promises of cheap land with good black soil.

[12] The Brazilian government was interested in increasing European settlement, often paid for travel (thus enabling the poorest members of society to emigrate), and even promised to provide clothing and food to the settlers.

The settlers were unfamiliar with the strange climate and how to cultivate it, succumbed to diseases without any medical help, and experienced many deaths.

Their suffering became known in Ukraine and even became the subject of a series of poems, "To Brazil", by the well-known Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko.

From that year until 1914, approximately 15,000 to 20,000 Ukrainians were brought to Brazil by the Brazilian government in order to help build a railroad from the State of São Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul through Paraná.

This group was more diverse, coming not only from the Galicia region in Ukraine but also from Volhynia, Polesia, as well as in smaller numbers from Transcarpathia, Bukovina and from Ukrainian settlements in Yugoslavia.

This group, numbering approximately 7,000[3] was for the most part more educated and highly skilled compared to previous immigrants, and included many intellectuals.

[3] The new arrivals helped create the Brazilian chapter of the Ukrainian scouting organization Plast which continues to function in Brazil today.

[3] Lavish onion-domed churches proliferate throughout the villages in the Ukrainian part of Brazil, despite the modest economic means of the farmers.

[14] In some respects rural Brazilian-Ukrainian society resembles that of Galicia in the 19th century, where the influence of the Church and its priests was so great that it has been referred to as theocratic.

[citation needed] Although most Brazilian Ukrainians have lived in Brazil for 4-5 generations and few have ever seen Ukraine,[17] they have preserved their language and culture to a large degree in rural Paraná state.

[18] Due to isolation from Ukraine, the Ukrainians of Brazil speak a 100-year-old form of the language's Galician or "Upper Dniestrian" dialect.

[17] Paraná boasts five Ukrainian-language radio stations,[15] including "Zabava" which broadcasts news, Ukrainian folk and pop music, and the Divine Liturgy.

[20] Religious associations from Brazil and abroad, such as the Baptist Association of Social Action, etc., in Brazil and the Global Kingdom Partnership Network, etc., abroad, are helping to displace the Ukrainian refugees that accumulate on the borders of the European countries that border Ukraine, such as Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, etc.