Mykolaiv (Ukrainian: Миколаїв [mɪkoˈlɑjiu̯] ⓘ, Russian: Николаев, romanized: Nikolayev [nʲɪkɐˈla(j)ɪf]) is a port city and a hromada (municipality) in southern Ukraine. Mykolaiv is the administrative center of Mykolaiv Raion (district) and Mykolaiv Oblast (province).
Located at the confluence of the Inhul and Southern Bug rivers, the city serves as a transportation hub, containing a sea port, commercial port, and river port, as well as highway and railway junctions and an airport. Connected to the Black Sea, Mykolaiv is the location of an important bridge crossing. This city is one of the main shipbuilding centers in the region. Aside from three shipyards within the city, there are a number of research centers specializing in shipbuilding, such as the State Research and Design Shipbuilding Center, Zoria-Mashproekt and others. As of 2022, the city had a population of 470,011 (2022 estimate).
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, large parts of Mykolaiv were destroyed by Russian attacks. Mykolaiv holds the honorary title "Hero City of Ukraine".
Name
The city is known under two names, which differ in Ukrainian and Russian; there are several transliterations of each name. The Ukrainian name of the city is Миколаїв, transliterated as Mykolaiv. The Russian name, Никола́ев, transliterates as Nikolaev or Nikolayev.
The city was founded in the course of the Russian conquests during the Second Russo-Turkish War of 1787–1792. Founded by Prince Grigory Potemkin as Nikolaev, it was the last of the many cities he established. On 27 August 1789, Potemkin ordered its naming near the wharf at the mouth of the Ingul river, on a high, cool and breezy spot where the Ingul river meets the Southern Bug river. To build the city he brought in peasants, soldiers, and Turkish prisoners; 2,500 were working there during 1789. The shipyards were built first (1788).
Potemkin named the city after Saint Nicholas, the patron of seafarers, on whose day (6 December) he had obtained victory at the siege of Ochakov in 1788. The name Nikolaev is known from the legal order (writ) Number 1065 by Prince Potemkin to Mikhail Faleev dated 27 August 1789.
In 1920, after the establishment of Soviet power, the Odesa provincial council (of laborers and peasants' deputies) petitioned the Soviet Ukrainian government—the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUTSIK)—to rename the city of Mykolaiv to Vernoleninsk ("Faithful to Lenin"). As the city of Mykolaiv was a district center of the Odesan province, presumably, the petition would have been initiated by the Odesa City Council, but documentary evidence of this so far has not been identified. On 15 April 1924 the Plenum of the Central Administrative-Territorial Commission of the VUTSIK considered and rejected the petition of the Odesan executive committee. Perhaps the members of the Soviet-Ukraine government thought that the name sounded too obsequious.
Information regarding the alleged renaming of Mykolaiv was disseminated by German maps of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as in German encyclopedic publications in 1927 and 1932, which show Vernoleninsk on the USSR part of the European maps. The city was designated as Mykolaiv in publications of the same map in other languages.
To distinguish Mykolaiv from the much smaller west Ukraine city of Mykolaiv in Lviv Oblast, the latter is sometimes called "Mykolaiv on the Dniester" after the major river that it is situated on, while the former is located on the Southern Bug, another major river, and may also be called "Mykolaiv on the Bug".
History
Early history
Archaeologists have found proof of ancient settlements on the territory of Mykolaiv. In 2018, archaeologists discovered a sunken Ancient Greek ship near the Mykolaiv region, dating from the fifth century BC, the period of Greek colonization of the Northern Black Sea. Researchers stated: "This Ancient Greek ship is one of the oldest known in the Northern Black Sea."
The city has long had close associations with shipbuilding.
The area was populated throughout time by Scythians, ancient Greeks, Slavic tribes, hordes of nomads and free Zaporozhian Cossacks.
The territory of the modern Mykolaiv Oblast encompassed the Buh-Hard Palanka with its center in Voznesensk, where, according to the 1756 Zaporozhian Host Register only 8,000 people resided; due to frequent Crimean Tatar raids, they lived predominantly on remote, fortified farmsteads for defensive reasons .
However, the intensive settlement of the Mykolaiv peninsula started in the last quarter of the 18th century already after the capture of the northern Black Sea coast region by Russia from the Ottoman Empire.
The Russian Empire's Black Sea Navy Headquarters was in Mykolaiv for more than 100 years until the Imperial Russian Navy moved it to Sevastopol, near the southern tip of the Crimean Peninsula. During the Crimean War (1853–1856), Mykolaiv became the main rear base to support Russia's efforts in the war. Most businesses that were created in the city belonged to the military-industrial complex, and, consequently, Mykolaiv was closed to foreigners for many decades.
By the late 19th century, Mykolaiv's port ranked third in the Russian Empire (after Saint Petersburg and Odesa) in trade with foreign countries. Grain-export suppliers of the steppe region (of Ukraine and Southern Russia) were the greatest in the Russian Empire. Mykolaiv had become a great industrial center in the Southern Ukraine.
Jews started to settle in Mykolaiv in the late 18th century. By being in the area west of the Dnieper which was where Jews were legally allowed to reside (the Pale of Settlement), Mykolaiv became a major Jewish centre of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. During the course of the 19th century, the Czarist governments largely banned Jews from living east of the Dnieper River. In 1866 restrictions were lifted and the Jewish community of Mykolaiv developed rapidly but years later Jews suffered in the pogroms of May 1881 and April 1899.
20th century
During the Ukrainian War of Independence, the city was occupied in 1918 by German troops who were commanded by Field Marshal Hermann von Eichhorn, and passed to the Ukrainian State. It was subsequently occupied in 1919 by French and Greek troops who had been attached to the French-commanded Armée d'Orient (1915–1919) in the course of the Greek Ukrainian campaign - which formed part of the Southern Russia campaign of 1918–1919 by the Allies of World War I during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. In 1920, Soviet power was established. Afterwards it was the seat of the Mykolaiv Governorate of Ukraine, until it was merged with the Odesa Governorate.
In 1926 there were 21,786 Jews (about 20.8% of the total population) in Mykolaiv.
In the course of Operation Barbarossa Mykolaiv was occupied on 16 August 1941 by German invaders. In September, German forces massacred over 35,000 non-combatants, most of them Jews, in the city and its region. In April 1942, the Stalag 364 prisoner-of-war camp was relocated from Rzeszów in German-occupied Poland to Mykolaiv. It was dissolved in December 1943. During the occupation, an underground partisan sabotage group, the Mykolaiv Center, conducted guerilla activities. On 28 March 1944 the city was liberated, in part because of Soviet Senior Lieutenant Konstantin F. Olshansky's marines and their daring raid during which the majority of his troops were killed.
In the post-war period Mykolaiv became one of the shipbuilding centers of the USSR, with three shipyards: Black Sea, 61 Kommunara, and Okean.
The asteroid 8141 Nikolaev (1982 SO4) was discovered in 1982 by Nikolai Chernykh at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory and was named in honor of the city.
21st century
In March 2012, Mykolaiv gained international notoriety for lawlessness and police corruption following the rape and murder of Oksana Makar. Her three attackers were apprehended, but two were released because of family connections to local government officials. After a media outcry and public protests, all three attackers were charged with her murder.
During the Euromaidan protests of 2013–2014, Mykolayiv was the scene of anti-Yanukovich protests. After the victory of Euromaidan, the situation calmed down somewhat until 7 April 2014, when some pro-Russians tried to take over the local administration building. Pro-Ukrainians stopped them from taking over the administration building and destroyed the pro-Russian camp not far from it, after which the situation in the city became calm.
Until 2016, the main street of Mykolaiv was called Sovetskaya ("Soviet Street"). In 2016, it was renamed Soborna Street.
Until 18 July 2020, Mykolaiv was incorporated as a city of oblast significance. It also served as the administrative center of Mykolaiv and Vitovka Raions even though it did not belong to any of these raions. In July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Mykolaiv Oblast to four, the city of Mykolaiv was merged into Mykolaiv Raion.
In February and March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russian military forces attacked Mykolaiv and took the city into a semi-encirclement. Ukrainian forces barred Russian forces from the city, though Russian artillery continued to shell it. By July, half of the pre-war population had left the city. The Danish government has invested nearly $250 million to help the city with multiple issues such as construction, education, green energy and vocational training.
Following a Russian strike against the main waterline connecting Mykolaiv with Dnipro river on 12 April 2022, local inhabitants were left without access to centralized water supply for almost a month. Later, water for the needs of the city's population was being procured from local rivers. On 7 October 2025 Oleksiy Kuleba, Minister of Communities and Territorial Development of Ukraine, officially reported, that centralized supply of freshwater to the city has been resumed after the completion of a new water pipeline.
Administrative status
Mykolaiv is the administrative center of Mykolaiv Oblast (region), as well as that of Mykolaiv Raion. It hosts the administration of Mykolaiv urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine.
Geography
Mykolaiv is located in a primarily flat terrain area, the fertile, grain-producing steppe region of southern Ukraine. The nearest mountains to Mykolaiv are 300 km (186 mi) south, at the southern end of the Crimean Peninsula. The lack of any mountain barriers north of Mykolaiv means that cold Arctic winds can blow south, unimpeded by any terrain elevation, to Mykolaiv in winter.
Mykolaiv is on a peninsula along the estuary of the Southern Bug river where it meets the Inhul River, 65 km (40 mi) from the Black Sea. Both the Inhul River and the Southern Bug River follow very winding courses just before they join at the northeast corner of Mykolaiv. This has created several long and narrow peninsulas just north of Mykolaiv, and the main part of Mykolaiv is itself on a peninsula at a 180-degree bend in the Southern Bug River.
The area of the city is 260 km2 (100 sq mi).
Mykolaiv is in the second time zone (Eastern European Time).
Ecology
Mykolaiv has environmental issues, which is common in many cities in Ukraine, such as pollution of water, the air, and groundwater; drinking water quality, noise, waste management, and conservation of biological diversity in the city. One of Mykolaiv's most urgent problems is the disposal of solid household waste.
The city has 18 preserved sites, totaling about 12 km2 (5 sq mi):
- The Mykolaiv Zoo
- The monuments of landscape art: Park Peremohy, Park People's Garden, 68 Paratroopers Park, Square, The Sivašskij, The Boulevard Bunker, Linea (Line) Park, Young Heroes Park; Youth Park in the Inhulskyi District
- The Botanical Natural Monument Memory Square
- The Dubki Reserved Nature boundary
- The Balabanovka Forest Reserve
- The Reservoir Hydrological Reserve
- The Turkish Fountain Hydrological Natural Monument
- The Dubka (oak) 4 Botanical Nature Monument
Climate
The city's climate is moderately continental- cold semi arid steppe climate with cold winters and warm to hot summers. Mykolaiv's average temperature is 10 °C (50 °F). The lowest average temperature is in January −1.9 °C (29 °F), the highest in July 23.1 °C (74 °F).
Mykolaiv has an average of 472 mm (19 in) of precipitation per year, with the lowest precipitation in October, and the most in July. Mykolaiv has mild snow cover every year.
Average relative humidity is 73% for the year; the lowest humidity is in August (60%); the highest in December (86%). The lowest cloud are seen in August; the highest are in December.
The prevailing winds come from the North; the least frequent source of wind is the Southeast. The maximum wind speed is in February, the lowest is from July through September. In January, the average wind speed is 4.1 m/s (meters per second); in July, the average is 3.1 m/s.
Population
Language
Distribution of the population by native language according to the 2001 census: