Ukraine: Zaporizhia

Zaporizhia is a city in southeastern Ukraine, situated on the banks of the Dnieper River. It is the administrative center of the Zaporizhia Oblast. Population: 770,672.

Archaeological finds in the area suggest that Scythian nomads were living there two to three thousand years ago. The Scythians were replaced in time by Khazars, Pechenegs, Cumans, Tatars, and Eastern Slavs. In 1552 Dmytro Vyshnevetsky erected wood-earth fortifications on the island Mala Khortytsia in the Dnieper River near the island Khortytsia. These fortifications were a prototype of the Zaporizhian Sich. The Sich was a stronghold of the Cossacks who lived south of the rapids of the Dnieper on the border of the Polish–Lithuanian Rzeczpospolita and the Grand Duchy of Moscow.

The modern city was established in 1770 as the fortress of Alexandrovskaya, named so for General Alexander Golitsyn and designed to protect the southern territories from Turkish threats.
In 1806, it became a town and was named Alexandrovsk. In 1921, the name was changed to Zaporizhia, literally meaning beyond the rapids, alluding to the rapids which used to exist on the Dnieper River at the time, before the construction of the Dnieper Hydroelectric Station in 1932.

Stamp is White Mulberry - Morus Alba, issued on 2013-01-11

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