Welcome to Russian History Retold.

Episode 321, the history of Kiev.

Last time we covered the history of St. Petersburg. Today, we finish the series on the great

cities of Russia with one of the oldest, Keeve. It has a truly mixed history, rich before the 13th century

and after the mid-19th.

In between, it was forced to recover from a series of devastating invasions and sieges.

It went from a city of 100,000 in the year 1050 to 50 or 100 people in 1241,

not fully recovering for centuries thereafter.

Before we get into its history, let's talk about the city in 2025. Of course, the 800-pound elephant in the room is the war with Russia and its effect on the capital city of Ukraine.

Currently, it is the seventh most populated city in Europe with 3 million inhabitants.

It lies on both sides of the Dineper River, the fourth longest one in Europe.

It is bordered by the Pulsian lowland, which is characterized by sandy lowlands with large,

mostly swampy valleys.

The Keeve Mountains or Keeve Hills surround it, ranging in height from about 150 to 200 meters tall.

Due to the incredible damage it saw during the Nazi invasion in World War II,

over 70% of its current architecture was built after 1950.

Still, much of that went uncompleted as the Soviet Union was running out of money,

and Keeves' rebuilding wasn't at the top of the list.

There are a number of older buildings, such as the St. Sophia Cathedral,

and the Kiv Pichersk Lava, also known as the Monastery of the St. Sophia Cathedral and the Kiev Pichersk Lava, also known as the monastery of the caves.

The most imposing structure is Mother Ukraine, originally called Motherland.

It is a 62-meter or 203-foot-tall titanium statue built in the late 1970s to commemorate those who died in defense of the Soviet Union during World War II.

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