Limestone (вапняк; vapniak). A sedimentary rock consisting chiefly of calcium carbonate (over 50 percent), primarily in the form of calcite, but in very young rocks also of aragonite. A third calcium carbonate mineral, vaterite, occurs only in traces, because it quickly alters to calcite. There is a continuous series of transition to dolomite (the calcium-magnesium carbonate), most of the time through secondary dolomitization and consequent recrystallization. Marble is a metamorphosed equivalent of either limestone or dolomite. The color is mostly white or gray, but it can vary widely, if the rock is stained by traces of impurities. In the commercial manufacture of lime, limestone refers to any rock which contains at least 80 percent carbonate of calcium or magnesium, and which slakes when water is added upon calcination (thermal decomposition).

Limestone of different ages is found in various forms nearly everywhere in Ukraine (except in its central reaches). The oldest are the thick deposits of crinoid Silurian limestones in the Zbruch River valley; they are followed by the Devonian dolomitic limestones of southwestern Podilia, the southern Donets Ridge, and the southwestern part of the Dnipro-Donets Trough. Carboniferous limestones form thick deposits in the Donets Basin. Jurassic limestones are known in the southern part of the Crimean Mountains and the Caucasus Mountain and in the southern part of the Opilia Upland and are found at considerable depths in the Dnipro-Donets Trough. Cretaceous limestones are exposed in Podilia, Roztochia, the Volhynia-Kholm Upland, and, less commonly, the Carpathian Mountains. They form large deposits in the northern part of the Crimean Mountains and the Caucasus Mountains, lie at considerable depths in the Black Sea Depression, the Dnipro-Donets Trough, and the Prypiat Trough, and rest on the southern slopes of the Voronezh Massif. Paleogene marls occur in the Donets Basin, and Miocene bryozoan and reefy limestones in western Ukraine.

The limestones of the Donets Basin are of the greatest industrial use. Most notable are the large, high-quality deposits of fluxstone mined at Komsomolsk (Donetsk oblast), Dokuchaievsk, and Novotroitsk (respectively southeast, south, and southwest of Donetsk), as well as at Balaklava (a suburb of Sevastopol) and (of lesser quality) at Bila Krynytsia and other sites south of Kryvyi Rih. Much limestone is mined for cement in Vynnytsia oblast and Mykolaiv oblast. Limestone is used as building stone largely in the Crimea, the Donets Basin, Kharkiv oblast, and Podilia. Chemical and other industrial uses of limestone correspond to the location of the respective industries.

Peter Sonnenfeld

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 3 (1993).]