Версия 07:28, 5 июля 2011

Dnieper River in ancient Greek (Danapris in Latin of the 4th century). The largest river in Ukraine and the third largest in Europe (after the Volga River and the Danube River). From the dawn of history the Dnieper has been closely bound up with the life of the Ukrainian people. It is the ‘holy river’ of Ukraine. Its length is 2,285 km, of which 485 km lie within the Russian Federation, 595 km within Belarus, and 1,095 km within Ukraine. The Dnieper Basin covers 504,000 sq km, of which 289,000 sq km are within Ukraine (48 percent of its area).

The basin occupies 42 percent of the territory of the Ukrainian state and 36 percent of Ukrainian ethnic territory. The Dnieper flows south through the center of Ukraine and bisects its natural zones — forest, forest-steppe, and steppe — interconnecting them and connecting them with the Black Sea. Of the long-settled principal areas of Ukraine, only Galicia, western Volhynia, and Transcarpathia lie beyond the basin of the Dnieper.

Travel is easy from the Dnieper Basin to basins northwest of it — the Vistula River, the Neman River, and the Daugava River,  but difficult to other basins, such as the basins of the Dniester River, the Boh River, the Volga River, and the Don River. Easy communications between the Dnieper River, the Prypiat River, and the Buh River by means of the Vistula facilitated the expansion of Poland into Ukraine. The Dnieper's role as a unifying force and gateway to the sea was, however, weakened by a 70 km stretch of rapids in the steppe belt. In spite of this obstacle, the Dnieper was the main axis of the first Ukrainian state — Kyivan Rus'. The nucleus of a second state — the Zaporozhian Sich —arose on the Dnieper. The river is the artery of Ukraine, its main highway, and its source of hydroelectric power.