Dnipro is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. It is located in the eastern part of Ukraine, 391 km (243 mi) southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on the Dnipro River, from which it takes its name. Dnipro is the administrative centre of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. It hosts the administration of Dnipro urban hromada. Dnipro has a population of 968,502 (2022 estimate).
Archeological evidence suggests the site of the present city was settled by Cossack communities from at least 1524. Yekaterinoslav ("glory of Catherine") was established by decree of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in 1787 as the administrative center of Novorossiya. From the end of the 19th century, the town attracted foreign capital and an international, multi-ethnic workforce exploiting Kryvbas iron ore and Donbas coal. Up until the German occupation in World War II, more than a third of the city population was Jewish.
Renamed Dnipropetrovsk in 1926 after the Ukrainian Communist Party leader Grigory Petrovsky, it became a focus for the Stalinist commitment to the rapid development in the Soviet Union of heavy industry. After World War II, this included nuclear, arms, and space industries whose strategic importance led to Dnipropetrovsk's designation as a closed city.
In December 1991, the city's voters overwhelmingly approved Ukraine's declaration of independence. Following the Euromaidan events of 2014, they shifted their allegiance from pro-Russian parties to those favouring closer ties with the European Union. As a result of the ensuing "decommunization", the city was renamed Dnipro in 2016. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dnipro rapidly developed as a logistical hub for humanitarian aid and a reception point for people fleeing the various battle fronts.
Name
Current names
Name history
The original name of a Ukrainian Cossack city on the territory of modern Dnipro was Novyi Kodak (Ukrainian: Новий Кодак [noˈwɪj koˈdɑk], New Kodak). Also on the territory of Modern Dnipro, the Russian Empire founded Yekaterinoslav (the glory of Catherine). This name was first mentioned in a report to Azov Governor Vasily Chertkov to Grigory Potemkin on 23 April 1776. He wrote "The provincial city called Yekaterinoslav should be the best convenience on the right side of the Dnieper River near Kaydak..." (Which referred to New Kodak). The construction was officially transferred to the right bank in a decree of Empress of Russia Catherine II of 23 January 1784.
In the 17th century the city was also known as Polovytsia.
In 1918, the Central Council of Ukraine of the Ukrainian People's Republic proposed to change the name of the city to Sicheslav; however, this was never finalised.
In 1926 the city was renamed after communist leader Grigory Petrovsky. In some Anglophone media Dnipro was nicknamed the Rocket City during the Cold War.
The 2015 law on decommunization required the city to be renamed. On 29 December 2015 the Dnipro City Council officially changed the reference of the city naming from referring to Petrovsky to being in honor of Saint Peter, thus making the name consistent with the law without actually changing the name itself.
On 3 February 2016 a draft law was registered in the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) to change the name of the city to Dnipro. On 19 May 2016 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to officially rename the city (to Dnipro). The resolution was approved by 247 out of the 344 MPs, with 16 opposing the measure.
Following the renaming of the city the reference to Petrovsky has been removed from institutions named after the city. A notable exception is the name of the surrounding province, which is listed in the territorial structure of Ukraine in the Constitution. Thus until a lengthy and complicated process of amending is carried out, it officially retains the name Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
History
Early history
Human settlements in current Dnipropetrovsk Oblast date from the Paleolithic era. According to archeological finds, in the Paleolithic period (7—3 thousand BC) human settlements appear near the Aptekarska brook in what is now Chechelivskyi District and on Monastyrskyi Island. A Neolithic stonecrafter's house has been excavated in one of Dnipro's city parks. In the Bronze Age the area was settled by diverse tribes. Traces of Cimmerian settlements during the Bronze Age have been found near today's Taras Shevchenko Park. The area of modern Dnipro was part of the Scythian empire from approximately the 1st century BC until the 3rd century BC. During the Migration Period (300–800) nomadic tribes of the Huns, Avars, Bulgarians, and Magyars passed through the lands of the Dnieper region, they came into contact with local agricultural East Slavs.
The area of modern Dnipro was part of the Kievan Rus' (882–1240). The region witnessed fighting between the armies of Kievan Rus' and Khazars, Pechenegs, Tork people and Cumans. In the 13th century the Dnieper region was devastated during the Mongol Empire conquest of Kievan Rus'. The area of modern Dnipro city was incorporated into the Mongol's khanate Golden Horde.
In the 15th century the area became part of the Kiev Voivodeship (1471–1565) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Archeological finds in today's Dnipro's urban district Samarskyi District suggest that the important river crossing was a trading settlement from at least 1524. The Dnipro city council officially set 1526 as the date of the city's foundation in August 2026. (Previously 1776 was the official date of the foundation of Dnipro.) This year of foundation is based on the existence of the Stara Samar settlement on the territory of the modern Dnipro. Starting in December 2025 the city council had been consulting with experts to set a new official year of the city's foundation; since they believe 1776 "is a myth of imperial Russia", and that the city existed many years before 1776.
In 1635, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth built the Kodak Fortress above the Dnieper Rapids at Kodaky on the south-eastern outskirts of modern Dnipro near the current Kaidatsky Bridge, only to have it destroyed within months by the Cossacks of Ivan Sulyma. Rebuilt in 1645, it was captured by Zaporozhian Sich in 1648.
Around the fortress a settlement emerged that became a town in Kodak Palanka (province) of the Zaporizhian Sich called Novyi (New) Kodak. Cossacks often hid the true number of the population to reduce taxation and other obligations, but according to documentary evidence, it can be assumed that the population of New Kodak was at least 3,000 people. The fortress was garrisoned by Cossacks until the Sich, allied with the Ottoman Empire and their Tartar vassals, drove out the encroaching Tsardom of Russia. Under the terms of the Russian withdrawal—the Treaty of the Pruth in 1711—the Kodak fortress was demolished.
In the mid-1730s, the fortress and Russians returned, living in an uneasy cohabitation with local cossacks. From mid-century they co-existed with the Zaporozhian sloboda (or "free settlement") of Polovytsia located on the site of today's Central Terminal and the Ozyorka farmers market.
In the Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), the Zaporozhian cossacks allied with Empress Catherine II. No sooner had they assisted the Russians to victory than they faced an imperial ultimatum to disband their confederation. The liquidation of the Sich destroyed their political autonomy and saw the incorporation of their lands into the new governates of Novorossiya. In 1784, Catherine ordered the foundation of new city, commonly referred to at the time as Katerynoslav.
In 2001 the seal of Kodak Palanka became the central element of Dnipro's coat of arms and Dnipro's official flag.
Imperial city
Establishment of Catherine's city
The first written mention of a town in the Russian Empire called Yekaterinoslav can be found in a report from Azov Governor Vasily Chertkov to Grigory Potemkin on 23 April 1776. He wrote "The provincial city called Yekaterinoslav should be the best convenience on the right side of the Dnieper River near Kaydak..." (referring to Novyi Kodak). In 1777, a town named Yekaterinoslav (the glory of Catherine), was built to the north of the present-day city at the confluence of the Samara and Kilchen rivers. The site was badly chosen – spring waters transformed the city into a bog. The surviving settlement was later renamed Novomoskovsk.
The territory of modern Dnipro, despite the modern-day city's size, still has not expanded to encompass the territory of (Chertkov's) Yekaterinoslav of 1776. On 22 January 1784 Russian Empress Catherine the Great signed an Imperial Ukase directing that "the gubernatorial city under name of Yekaterinoslav be moved to the right bank of the Dnieper river near Kodak". The new city would serve Grigory Potemkin as a Viceregal seat for the combined Novorossiya and Azov Governorates.
On 20 May [O.S. 9 May] 1787, in the course of her celebrated Crimean journey, the Empress laid the foundation stone of the Transfiguration Cathedral in the presence of Austrian Emperor Joseph II, Polish king Stanisław August Poniatowski, and the French and English ambassadors. Potemkin's grandiose plans for a third Russian imperial capital alongside Moscow and Saint Petersburg included a viceregal palace, a university (Potemkin envisioned Yekaterinoslav as the 'Athens of southern Russia'), courts of law and a botanical garden, were frustrated by a renewal of the Russo-Turkish war in 1787, by bureaucratic procrastination, defective workmanship, and theft, Potemkin's death in 1791 and that of his imperial patroness five years later.
In 1815 a government official described the town as "more like some Dutch [Mennonite] colony then a provincial administrative centre". The cathedral, much reduced in size, was completed in 1835.
Scholarship concerning the foundation of the city has been subject to political considerations and dispute. In 1976, to have the bicentenary of the city coincide with the 70th anniversary of the birth of Soviet party leader, and regional native son, Leonid Brezhnev, the date of the city's foundation was moved back from the visit Russian Empress Catherine II in 1787, to 1776.
Following Ukrainian independence, local historians began to promote the idea of a town emerging in the 17th century from Cossack settlements, an approach aimed at promoting the city's Ukrainian identity. They cited the chronicler of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, Dmytro Yavornytsky, whose History of the City of Ekaterinoslav completed in 1940 was authorised for publication only in 1989, the era of Glasnost.
In December 2025 the Dnipro City Council was in an ongoing consulting process with experts to set a new official year of Dnipro's foundation. According to them the official year of founding 1776 "is a myth of imperial Russia", and that the city existed many years before 1776.
Growth as an industrial centre
While into the late nineteenth century the principal business of the town remained the processing of agricultural raw materials, there was an early state-sponsored effort to promote manufacture. In 1794 the government supported two factories: a textile factory that was transferred from the town of Dubrovny Mogilev Governorate and a silk-stockings factory that was brought from the village of Kupavna near Moscow. In 1797 the textile factory employed 819 permanent workers, 378 of whom were women and 115 children. The silk stocking workers, the majority being women, were serfs bought at an auction for 16,000 roubles. Conditions, as Potemkin himself was forced to admit, were harsh, with many of the workers dying from malnutrition and exhaustion.
From 1797 to 1802, while serving under the Emperor Paul I as the administrative centre of a centre of the Novorossiya Governorate, the settlement was officially known as Novorossiysk.
Despite the bridging of the Dnieper in 1796, commerce was slow to develop. 1832 saw the establishment of the small Zaslavsky iron-casting factory, the town's first metallurgical enterprise. Industrialisation gathered apace in the 1880s with the establishment of the first railway connections. Rail construction responded to the enterprise of two men: John Hughes, a Welsh businessman who built an iron works at Yuzovka in 1869–72, and developed the Donbas coal deposits; and the Russian geologist Alexander Pol, who in 1866 had discovered the Krivoy Rog iron ore basin, Krivbass, during archaeological research.
In 1884, a railway to supply pig iron foundries in Krivoy Rog with Donbass coal crossed the Dnieper at Yekaterinoslav. It proved a spur to further industrial development and to the creation of the new suburbs of Amur and Nyzhnodniprovsk.