Geographically, the Ukrainian SSR was situated in Eastern Europe to the north of the Black Sea, bordered by the Soviet republics of Moldavia, Byelorussia, and the Russian SFSR. The Ukrainian SSR's border with Czechoslovakia formed the Soviet Union's westernmost border point. According to the Soviet Census of 1989 the republic had a population of 51,706,746 inhabitants, which fell sharply after the breakup of the Soviet Union. On 1 January 2018, according to the State Statistics Committee of Ukraine the population of the country was 42,216,766 permanent residents.