- published: 26 Sep 2014
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Ukraine (i/juːˈkreɪn/ yew-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, transliterated: Ukrayina, [ukrɑˈjinɑ]; Russian: Украина; Crimean Tatar: Ukraina) is a country in Central and Eastern Europe. Ukraine borders the Russian Federation to the east and northeast, Belarus to the northwest, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west, Romania and Moldova to the southwest, and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south and southeast, respectively. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after the Russian Federation.
According to a popular and well established theory, the medieval state of Kievan Rus was established by the Varangians in the 9th century as the first historically recorded East Slavic state which emerged as a powerful nation in the Middle Ages until it disintegrated in the 12th century. By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kingdom of Poland. After the Great Northern War (1700–1721) Ukraine was divided between a number of regional powers and, by the 19th century, the largest part of Ukraine was integrated into the Russian Empire with the rest under Austro-Hungarian control. A chaotic period of incessant warfare ensued, with several internationally recognized attempts at independence from 1917 to 1921, following World War I and the Russian Civil War. Ukraine emerged from its own civil war, and on December 30, 1922 Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic became one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian SSR's territory was enlarged westward during the civil war shortly before, and after World War II, and further south in 1954 with the Crimea transfer. In 1945, the Ukrainian SSR became one of the founding members of the United Nations.
Adam Mitchel Lambert (born January 29, 1982) is an American singer-songwriter and stage actor. Born in Indianapolis but raised in San Diego, Lambert had dreamed of becoming a performer after appearing in numerous amateur productions in his childhood and adolescence. His passion overtook him when deciding to drop out of college, pursue his career, and perform in various professional theatrical productions across the world.
Lambert came to prominence following his appearance on the eighth season of American Idol. Although he was runner-up, Lambert launched a music career with the release of his debut studio album For Your Entertainment (2009) after signing with 19 in a joint venture with RCA. Debuting at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 198,000 copies in the U.S. in its first week, and reaching the top 10 in several countries worldwide, the album subsequently achieved international success with its singles "For Your Entertainment", "Whataya Want from Me" and "If I Had You". Soon after, he embarked on his first headlining worldwide concert tour, Glam Nation, making him the only American Idol contestant to do so in the year following his Idol season. The tour was followed by two live releases: an extended play entitled Acoustic Live! (2010), and a live CD/DVD Glam Nation Live (2011), which debuted at number one on the SoundScan Music Video chart. Lambert took executive producer credit and was a principal writer on his second studio album, Trespassing, which was released to critical acclaim on May 15, 2012.Trespassing made its debut in the number one spot on the Billboard 200 album chart, also topping the Billboard Digital Albums Chart and Canada's Digital Albums Chart.With this accomplishment, Lambert makes music history as the first openly gay artist to achieve the top charting position.
David Ernest Duke (born July 1, 1950) is a former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan an American activist and writer, and former Republican Louisiana State Representative. He was a candidate in the Democratic presidential primaries in 1988 and the Republican presidential primaries in 1992. Duke has unsuccessfully run for the Louisiana State Senate, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and Governor of Louisiana.
A former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Duke describes himself as a racial realist, asserting that "all people have a basic human right to preserve their own heritage." He is in strong opposition to what he asserts to be Jewish control of the Federal Reserve Bank, the federal government and the media. Duke supports stopping both legal and illegal Non-European immigration, preservation of what he labels Western culture and traditionalist Christian "family values", strict Constitutionalism, abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, voluntary racial segregation, ardent anti-communism and white separatism.