Kyiv & Northern Ukraine

Kyiv grew on the hills above the Dnipro as the capital of Kyivan Rus, the medieval state whose ruler Volodymyr adopted Christianity in 988 and whose son Yaroslav the Wise built Saint Sophia's Cathedral in the 11th century. Chernihiv, on the Desna, was one of the realm's leading princely cities, and its Transfiguration Cathedral is among the oldest surviving churches of the period. The Mongols sacked Kyiv in 1240, and the region passed to Lithuania and then Poland.

In the 17th century the north became Cossack country. The Pereiaslav agreement of 1654, which bound the Hetmanate to Moscow, was made in a town of today's Kyiv Oblast; Hetman Ivan Mazepa's capital at Baturyn was destroyed by Russian troops in 1708 after he sided with Sweden, and Hlukhiv then served as a Hetman capital. Under the Russian Empire, Kyiv grew into a large industrial and university city, and its Jewish, Polish and Russian communities were substantial.

The 20th century was catastrophic. Kyiv changed hands repeatedly in 1917–21, the Holodomor famine struck the villages, and in September 1941 German forces murdered tens of thousands of Kyiv's Jews at Babyn Yar. On 26 April 1986 a reactor exploded at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, forcing the evacuation of Pripyat and surrounding villages. Kyiv's Maidan was the stage for the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the protests of 2013–14. In February 2022 Russian forces advanced on Kyiv from Belarus and Russia, besieged Chernihiv and occupied towns such as Bucha and Irpin, where atrocities against civilians were later documented, before withdrawing from the north that spring.

Kyiv is the country's political, religious and cultural centre, and its identity has shifted sharply. Long a largely Russian-speaking city, it has moved decisively towards Ukrainian since 2014 and especially since 2022, with streets and monuments renamed and Russian-language signage disappearing. The capital's theatres, galleries, clubs and cafés have kept working between alerts, and a volunteer culture of fundraising and support for the army runs through daily life.

Religion matters symbolically here, because Kyiv is the cradle of Eastern Slavic Christianity. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra has been at the centre of the dispute between the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine and the church formerly tied to Moscow, which has lost its use of much of the monastery.

North of the capital lies Polissia, a land of pine forest, peat bog and slow rivers shared with Belarus, where dialects, wooden churches and old customs survived longer than elsewhere. Ivana Kupala, the midsummer night of bonfires, flower wreaths floated on rivers and searches for the fern flower, is still celebrated in Polissian villages and in Kyiv's open-air museum. Weaving, embroidery and pottery traditions vary from district to district, and the north-eastern Sumy and Chernihiv lands carry the heritage of the Hetmanate, whose old towns are sources of regional pride.

Kyiv had around 3 million people before the invasion and remains the largest city in Ukraine, with a population swollen at times by people displaced from the east. Chernihiv, Zhytomyr and Sumy each had around 250,000 to 290,000 residents before the war; Bila Tserkva is the largest town in Kyiv Oblast outside the capital.

The capital's economy rests on government, finance, IT, media, retail and services, while the surrounding oblasts combine farming — grain, potatoes, flax and dairy in Polissia — with food processing and light industry. Sumy was built on sugar refining, and Zhytomyr Oblast quarries granite and other stone.

Life under martial law sets the rhythm: sirens, nights in corridors or metro stations, and the constant possibility of air strikes. People go to work and school between alerts. Reconstruction continues in the towns of Kyiv Oblast damaged in 2022, but losses, mobilisation and the constant threat of attack weigh on every household, and the border districts of Sumy and Chernihiv oblasts live under repeated shelling.

The north eats the Ukrainian classics — borscht, varenyky dumplings, holubtsi cabbage rolls, salo cured pork fat and dark rye bread — with a Polissian accent. Potatoes are the staple of the forest country, fried into deruny pancakes or baked in the oven, and the woods supply mushrooms, bilberries and cranberries that are dried, pickled or made into preserves. River fish from the Desna and the Dnipro, including pike and carp, appear stuffed, fried or in fish soup.

Kyiv has given its name to two famous dishes. Kotleta po-kyivsky, chicken Kyiv, is a breaded chicken breast wrapped around herb butter. Kyivskyi tort, the Kyiv cake, is layers of nut meringue with buttercream, created at the city's Karl Marx confectionery factory in 1956.

Kyiv's Bessarabian market, in a covered hall at the south-west end of Khreshchatyk, has long sold farm cheese, honey, pickles and cured meats. The city's restaurants range from Soviet-style canteens to modern Ukrainian kitchens reworking village recipes. Drinks include uzvar dried-fruit compote, kvas and horilka, while Chernihiv gives its name to a widely sold Ukrainian lager, Chernihivske.

Kyiv's great sights, in peacetime, are its churches and hills. The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, with its caves and Great Bell Tower, and Saint Sophia's Cathedral are a UNESCO World Heritage Site together. Nearby stand the rebuilt St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, the Golden Gate, and Rastrelli's St Andrew's Church above the cobbled Andriivskyi Descent that leads down to the old merchant district of Podil. Independence Square and Khreshchatyk, the Motherland Monument above the Dnipro, the Babyn Yar memorial and the Pyrohiv open-air museum of folk architecture complete the city.

Chernihiv, north-east of Kyiv, keeps its medieval churches on the Val, the old citadel above the Desna, together with the Antoniy Caves monastery; the town was heavily damaged during the siege of 2022. Further out in Chernihiv Oblast are the ruined and rebuilt Hetman capital of Baturyn, the monastery town of Novhorod-Siverskyi and the Kachanivka country estate.

North of the capital, the Chornobyl exclusion zone surrounds the reactor, now enclosed in a giant steel arch, and the abandoned Soviet town of Pripyat; tours stopped in 2022. To the west, Zhytomyr has its cosmonautics museum and nearby Berdychiv its fortified Carmelite monastery. In the north-east, Sumy has its merchant churches and Hlukhiv its Hetman-era buildings, with the Trostianets palace in the south of the oblast.