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Few people realise how far the steppe extends into Europe. About half of Ukraine is steppe (U kraina means ‘at the border’) and it runs right down to the northern shore of the Black Sea, leaping over the Isthmus of Perekop into Crimea. ‘When I am dead, bury me / In my beloved Ukraine, / My tomb upon a grave mound high / Amid the spreading plain,’ wrote the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko.
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