Dnipropetrovsk

Brief information about the Dnipropetrovsk

Dnipro Dnipro (Ukrainian: Дніпро [d⁽ʲ⁾n⁽ʲ⁾iˈprɔ] ; Russian: Днепр, romanized: Dnepr [dʲnʲepr]), called Dnipropetrovsk (Ukrainian: Дніпропетро́вськ [ˌd⁽ʲ⁾n⁽ʲ⁾ipropeˈtrɔu̯sʲk]; Russian: Днепропетро́вск, romanized: Dnepropetróvsk [dʲnʲɪprəpʲɪˈtrofsk]) from 1926 until May 2016, is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants.

It stands 391 kilometres (243 mi) southeast of the Ukrainian capital Kiev on the Dnieper River, in the central-eastern part of Ukraine. Dnipro is the administrative centre of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Administratively, it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance, the centre of Dnipro municipality and extraterritorial administrative centre of Dnipro Raion.

It has a population of approximately 1,000,000 (2018 est.). Archeological findings suggest that the first fortified town in the territory of present-day Dnipro probably dates to the mid-16th century.Known as Ekaterinoslav (Russian: Екатериносла́в, romanized: Yekaterinoslav [jɪkətʲɪrʲɪnɐˈsɫaf]; Ukrainian: Катериносла́в, romanized: Katerynoslav [kɐtɛrɪnoˈslɑu̯]) until 1925, the city was formally inaugurated by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great (Russian: Екатерина, romanized: Ekaterina - hence its then name) in 1787 as the administrative centre of the newly-acquired vast territories of imperial New Russia, including those ceded to Russia by the Ottoman Empire under the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774).

Grigory Potemkin originally envisioned the city as the Russian Empire's third capital city, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Renamed Dnipropetrovsk in 1926, it became a vital industrial centre of Soviet Ukraine, one of the key centres of the nuclear, arms, and space industries of the Soviet Union.

In particular, it is home to the Yuzhmash, a major space and ballistic-missile design bureau and manufacturer. Because of its military industry, it functioned as a closed city until the 1990s. On 19 May 2016, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada changed the official name of the city from Dnipropetrovsk to Dnipro.

Dnipro is a powerhouse of Ukraine's business and politics and is the native city of many of the country's most important figures. Much of Ukrainian politics continues to be defined by the legacies of Leonid Kuchma, Pavlo Lazarenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, whose intermingled political careers started in Dnipropetrovsk.