stantsiya-3-dnipro

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станція 3 – Дніпро
Station 3 – Dnipro

The city might be known for you as Dnipropetrovsk (Дніпропетро́вськ), as it used to be named until May 2016. The name was changed, because the -petrovsk part is based on the surname of a Communist leader Grigory Petrovsky. But look, before 1926 it was called Yekaterinoslav (Russian: Екатериносла́в – Yekaterinoslav, Ukrainian: Катериносла́в – Katerynoslav), as the city was formally inaugurated by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great 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. Grigory Potemkin originally envisioned the city as the Russian Empire's third capital city, after Moscow and Saint Petersburg. It is currently named after the Dnieper River and is Ukraine's fourth-largest city, with about one million inhabitants. Because of its military industry, it functioned as a closed city until the 1990s.

BTW, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast still uses ye' olde name, because the names of the oblasti are inscripted into the Ukrainian Constitution. In 2019, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine approved the change of the oblast's name to Sicheslav Oblast (commemorating the Zaporizhian Sich, Sicheslav is also an unofficial name of Dnipro), but it still hasn't happened.

This city speaks mainly Russian (the same situation is in Krivoy Rig, that's why I used its Russian name) – according to the Wikipedia 63% of residents said that they spoke Russian at home, 9% spoke Ukrainian, and 25% spoke Ukrainian and Russian equally – but ethnically it is mostly Ukrainian – 82% vs. 13% Russian. It is important – the ethnicity in Ukraine is not necessarily bound to the language – Odesa also mostly speaks Russian and Lviv Ukrainian and both cities are predominantly Ukrainian in terms of ethnicity. The only regions in Ukraine that are enthnically also Russian are: Lugansk, Donetsk and the Crimea and these are currently illegally occupied by the Russian Federation.

Oh BTW, the best supermarket chain in Ukraine, ATB-Market, is headquartered in Dnipro. And also – this city is the second most Jewish city in Ukraine – 60 thousand Jews lives there. The Menorah Centre is an important Jewish community center and there are two synagogues there. Volodymyr Zelensky, Kryvorizhanyn (the same oblast), is Jewish BTW.

Arrival:

Departure: 053 П, 19:10 Dnipro-Holovny, 06:36 Odesa-Holovna