The history of the Jews in Ukraine dates back over a thousand years; Jewish communities have existed in the modern territory of Ukraine from the time of the Kievan Rus'. Important Jewish religious and cultural movements, from Hasidism to Zionism, arose there. According to the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish community in Ukraine constitutes Europe's third-largest and the world's fifth-largest.

The pogroms during the Russian Civil War were a wave of mass murders of Jews, primarily in Ukraine, during the Russian Civil War. In the years 1918–1920, there were 1,500 pogroms in over 1,300 localities, in which up to 250,000 were murdered. All armed forces operating in Ukraine were involved in the killings, in particular the anti-Communist Ukrainian People's Army and Armed Forces of South Russia. It is estimated that more than a million people were affected by material losses, 50,000 to 300,000 children were orphaned, and half a million were driven out from or fled their homes. The Whitaker Report of the United Nations cited the massacre of 100,000 to 250,000 Jews in more than 2,000 pogroms which occurred during the White Terror in Russia as an act of genocide.