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).

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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.