Dnieper River: course, history, economy and ecology

The Dnieper has undergone several name changes. Early ancient Greeks and Romans called the river Borysthénēs (from Scythian *varu-stāna), which in Scythian means "wide land", i.e. the Wild Field. Late antique (from the 4th century AD) Greco-Latin texts call it Danapris or Danaper, after its Sarmatian name *dānu apara "distant river". By the Huns the river was called Var (Iord. Get. 51), originally denoting the Kuban or one of its tributaries, and derived from the Sarmatian *var-dānu "broad river" (Ptolemy V, 8, 5, Ouardánēs). At the time of the rule of the Golden Horde on its lower course it received there the name Usu and Ohu (cf. Krimtatar. Özü), and later Exi (Tatar), Danapros (10th century), and Lussem (16th century). The present name Dnepr is the Slavic form of the Sarmatian name. Its forelimb *dānu "river" is also thought to be the root of the river names Danube, Dnister, Don, and Donets. Because of its great importance in the Slavic world, the Dnieper is sometimes called Slavutich "Slavic River" or Slavuta or Slavutyč "Son of Glory".

The river rises in Russia in the Valdai Heights, about 200 kilometers west of Moscow. Near the village of Bocharovo (Бочарово) in the heights of Bely (Бельская возвышенность), between Bely and Sychovka, there is the spring area, which has been a natural monument since 1981. The spring was described already in the late 17th century. It is located only a few kilometers from the main water divide point Baltic Sea-Black Sea-Caspian Sea.

For the first 200 kilometres or more of the river, the Dnieper tends to flow in a south-south-westerly direction and, after a bend to the west, passes the Russian city of Smolensk. About 60 kilometres below Smolensk it reaches the Belarusian border. For about 15 kilometres it is a border river before it turns south in a large bend at Orscha and crosses eastern Belarus. The largest town it flows through is Mahiljou (Mogiljow). After a total of 400 kilometres, it reaches the Ukrainian border at Novaya Huta and is again the border river for about 120 kilometres until it flows into the Kiev reservoir, the first of several Dnieper reservoirs. The Dnieper is Ukraine's main waterway and divides the country into western and eastern halves, flowing southeast from about Kiev before turning southwest in a wide arc called the Dnieper Bend below Kamjanske, formerly Dniprodzerzhynsk. After a total of over 1000 river kilometres in Ukraine, it finally flows into the Black Sea west of Kherson via the Dnepr-Bug-Liman estuary. In the lower reaches, rapids made the river unnavigable for a length of 70 km until the 19th century. In 1932, the regulation of the river south of Kiev was completed.