Okhtyrka

Okhtyrka ( uk, Охти́рка, ) is a city located in the Sumy Oblast (province) of Ukraine. It is administratively incorporated as a city of oblast significance. The city has also served as the administrative center of the smaller Okhtyrka Raion since 1975, although it does not belong to the raion itself.

Okhtyrka was once home to Hussars and Cossacks. It was also once a regional seat of the Sloboda Ukraine imperial region and of the Ukrainian SSR. Since the discovery of oil and gas in 1961, Okhtyrka has become the "oil capital of Ukraine." It is home to Okhtyrka air base and historical and religious places of interest.

The villages of Velyke Ozero (274 inhabitants), Zaluzhany (28 inhabitants), Prystan (7 inhabitants), and Koziatyn (6 inhabitants) belong to the Okhtyrka city administration which is designated into a separate subdivision of the Sumy Oblast.

Population

* 1867: 17,411
* 1900: 25,965
* 2001: 50,400
* 2021: 47,216

Name

According to the most probable etymology, Okhtyrka is named for the river by the same name on whose banks it is located.

According to some local historians, the river's name in translation from the Turkic language means "lazy river". In the opinion of others, the city's name from the same Turkic language is translated as the "place of ambush," or "white fort". Russian philologist Oleg Trubachyov considered that there are no serious grounds to accept the Turkic etymology and that the river's name is "insufficiently clear in origin."

Linguist Kostiantyn Tyshchenko points to the Gothic origin of the name "Okhtyrka".

Geography and climate

Located south of the Sumy region, Okhtyrka lies in the center of a triangle created by regional centers – Sumy, Kharkiv, and Poltava. The city is on the left bank of the Vorskla River of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth escaping Polonization, moving from the Right-bank Ukraine to Sloboda Ukraine. Next to the new settlement Polish authorities established a border outpost against the Muscovite Belgorod Border Line. The settlement and the outpost (fortress) were founded on the right bank of the Vorskla River led by Polish government official Kulczewski.Bazhan, O., Vortman, D.
Okhtyrka (ОХТИРКА)
'. Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine It was named Akhtyrsk.

In 1647, according to the act of demarcation of borders that drawn by the Treaty of Polyanovka of 1634, it was ceded by the Crown of Poland to the Tsardom of Russia. Akhtyrsk became the last southwestern point of the Belgorod defense line that was stretching along the southern border of the Russian state in the middle of the 17th century. In 1650 the Russian authorities reduced the fortress to a mere lookout outpost, next to which soon has appeared the Holy Trinity Monastery.

In 1653 on the banks of the Vorskla established a settlement which adopted the name of the outpost. In 1654 a fortification was completed, and in 1655-1656 further expanded by Russian ''sluzhilie'' (service members) led by the Tsar's appointed voivodes Larion Kaminin and Trofim Chernov. In 1656 the biggest group of over 1,000 people from right-bank Ukrainearrived, led by Cossack sotnik Arystov and protopope Antoniy from Zhyvotov (possibly the Kiev Voivodeship).

Being bolstered in this prominent position during the 17th and 18th centuries, Okhtyrka rose to rival Kharkiv