According to the 2021 census of population, houses, and flats, 92,898 people in the Czech Republic identified as Ukrainian nationals with Czech citizenship. Changes occurred following the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, when around 600,000 war immigrants arrived in the Czech Republic. By 2024, there were 580,000 Ukrainian refugees in the country. Ukrainians from these new waves of migration do not hold Czech citizenship and reside in the country for varying lengths of time.
In Karlovy Vary, Ukrainians from eastern Slovakia and Zakarpattia were present in 1945–1946, often arriving alongside Slovaks and Rusyns as former members of the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in the USSR. In 1950, 1,559 people in the Karlovy Vary region identified as Ukrainian or Russian. They lived mainly in the Cheb and Mariánské Lázně districts, and to a lesser extent in Sokolov. During the period of social liberalisation in the 1960s, Karlovy Vary became the sole centre for their cultural activities, hosting the only regional centre of Ukrainian cultural life in the Czech lands. By 1991, only 258 people in the entire Karlovy Vary district identified as Ukrainian. This decline was partly due to the recording of Rusyn nationality, which had previously not been reported.
In earlier censuses, fewer people identified as Ukrainian due to the impact of trials involving Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists, which also affected the Karlovy Vary region. Changes in the number of Ukrainians occurred after 1991, with the dissolution of the USSR and the emergence of an independent Ukraine.
Social migration of Ukrainians increased, while during the so-called normalization period, there was almost no association activity, except for the single politically sanctioned Cultural Union of Ukrainian Workers of the CSSR, based in Prešov with a branch in Prague. The 1970s and 1980s saw further restrictions on any Ukrainian efforts to establish associations or cultivate their own culture, including in Karlovy Vary.
In 2013, the Union of Ukrainians Bohemie was established in Karlovy Vary to preserve Ukrainian national culture and traditions. It brings together Ukrainians, including those without Czech citizenship, and provides opportunities for education and leisure activities for Ukrainian children. In 2022, it organised a Ukrainian children’s camp at the Orthodox church. A Ukrainian Saturday school also operates there.