A raion (Ukrainian: район, romanized: raion; pl. райони, raiony), often translated as district, is the second-level administrative division in Ukraine. Raions were created in a 1922 administrative reform of the Soviet Union, to which Ukraine, as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, belonged.
On 17 July 2020, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine's parliament) approved an administrative reform to merge most of the 490 raions, along with the "cities of regional significance", which were previously outside the raions, into just 136 reformed raions. Most tasks of the raions (education, healthcare, sport facilities, culture, and social welfare) were taken over by new hromadas, the subdivisions of raions. The 136 new districts include ten in Crimea, which have been de facto outside Ukrainian control since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014.
