The reasons which led me to write an introduction to Ukrainian dialectology are multifold. The main motiva-tion was to render available to a wide range of students of Slavic languages, and particularly of Ukrainian, an outline of Ukrainian dialectology and its dialects. The lack of introductory accounts of Ukrainian dialects in more accessible western European languages represents a great limit to all those students of Slavic languages who wish to approach the fascinating world of geograph-ical variation of contemporary Ukrainian.[...]A knowledge of territorial variation is a valuable aid to a better understanding of diachronic (historical variation and its reflection in documents of various geographic provenance) and synchronic language processes. Additionally it helps to better assess some contemporary sociolinguistic issues and various forms of language/dialectal mixture such as, for example, the Ukrainian-Russian mixed speech “suržyk” [...].