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Poltava Ukraine Information
Poltava (Ukrainian: Полтава) is a city in central Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Poltava Oblast, as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Poltavskyi Raion within the oblast. The city itself is also designated as its own separate raion within the oblast. The current estimated population is 313,400 (as of 2004). The city lies on the banks of the river Vorskla.
 History It is still unknown when the city was founded. Baltavar Kubrat's grave was found in its vicinity, and its name derives from the title he, his predecessors and his successors bore. Though the town was not attested before 1174, municipal authorities chose to celebrate the town's 1100th anniversary in 1999, for reasons unknown. The settlement is indeed an old one, as archeologists unearthed a Paleolithic dwelling as well as Scythian remains within the city limits.
The present name of the city is traditionally connected to the settlement Ltava which is mentioned in the Hypatian Chronicle in 1174. The region belonged to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the 14th century. The Polish administration took over in 1569. In 1648 Poltava was captured by the Ruthenian-Polish magnate Jeremi Wiśniowiecki (1612-51). Poltava was the base of a distinguished regiment of the Ukrainian Cossacks.
In 1667 the town passed to the Russian Empire.In the Battle of Poltava on June 27-28, 1709 (Old Style), or 8 July (New Style), tsar Peter the First, commanding 53,000 troops, defeated a Swedish army of 19,000 troops led by Field Marshal Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld (who had received the command of the army after the wounding of the Swedish king Charles XII on June 17). "Like a Swede at Poltava" remains a simile for "completely defeated" in Russian. The battle marked the end of Sweden as a great power and the rise of Russia as one.
 In 1775, Poltava's Monastery of the Exaltation of the Cross (Russian Крестовоздвиженский монастырь, Krestovozdvizhensky Monastyr) became the seat of bishops of the newly created Eparchy (Diocese) of Slaviansk and Kherson. This large new diocese included the lands of the Novorossiya Governorate and Azov Governorate north of the Black Sea. Since much of that area had been only recently conquered by Russia from the Ottoman Empire, and a large number of Orthodox Greek settlers had been invited to settle in the region, the Imperial Government picked a renowned Greek scholar, Eugenios Voulgaris to preside over the new diocese.After his retirement in 1779, he was replaced by another Greek theologian, Nikephoros Theotokis.
In World War II, after the Red Army had cleared the Wehrmacht out of the Eastern Ukraine by the end of 1943 during the Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive, by the summer of 1944 the allied USAAF conducted a number of shuttle bombing raids against the Third Reich under the name of Operation Frantic, and used purpose-built bases in the Poltava area, as well as near Myrgorod, as eastern locations for landing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers involved in those operations.
Sights
 The centre of the old city is a semicircular neoclassical square with the Tuscan column of cast iron (1805-11), commemorating the centenary of the Battle of Poltava and featuring 18 Swedish cannons captured in that battle. As Peter the Great celebrated his victory in the Savior church, this 17th-century wooden shrine was carefully preserved to this day. The five-domed city cathedral, dedicated to the Exaltation of the Cross, is a superb monument of Cossack Baroque, built between 1699 and 1709. As a whole, the cathedral presents a unity which even the neoclassical bell tower has failed to mar. Another frothy Baroque church, dedicated to the Dominion of the Theotokos, was destroyed in 1934 and rebuilt in the 1990s.
Transport and infrastructure
 Transportation in Poltava is well-developed. The city has two major railway stations, and railway links with the cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Kremenchuk and Krasnograd. The lines towards Kiev and Kharkiv are electrified and are used by an express train, a regular service with comfortable carriages. Electrification of the Poltava-Kharkiv line was completed in August 2008. Avtovokzal is the city's intercity bus station. Buses for local municipal routes depart from "AC-2" (auto station #2 - along Shevchenko Street) and "AC-3" (Zinkivska Street).
City transportation is represented by the following:
Trolleybuses with fifteen routes and a network of 72.6 km;
Buses, including a ring road routes (#19, 20, 21);
Marshrutkas on all bus routes.
Ticket prices for those kinds of city transport are respectively 0.75 UAH, 1.00 UAH and 1.25 UAH (as of June 2009).
Poltava has a domestic airport, situated in 5 km west outside the city limits near the village of Ivashki. The international highway M 03 (E40), which links Poltava with Kiev and Kharkiv, passes through the southern outskirts of Poltava city. There is also a regional highway P-17 crossing Poltava and linking it with Kremenchuk and Sumy.
 Whereabouts: in latitude 49° 00` 36`` North, in longitude 34° 00` 33`` east. Area: 103, 5 km2.
The city is situated in the Eastern part of Poltava region on both banks of the Vorskla River. It is one of the biggest industrial and cultural centers of the left-bank of Prydniprovye region. Poltava lies in the bounds of the Great East-European Plain, on the flat Poltava Plateau and its rapid river slope. The West Part of the town, the larger one, is situated on the comparatively high (150…159 m / 492…522 ft above sea level) Plateau, divided near the Vorskla Valley by relatively deep gullies into a series of flat topped projections (Monastyrsky, Instytutsky, Kobyshchansky, Ivanova Gora). The East Part of the city, the smaller one (Podil, Levada, Dublyanshchyna), is situated on the floodplain and partially on the first terrace of the Vorskla river. Here absolute height ranging from 78m to 100 m (from 256 to 328 ft) above sea level predominates.
The geographical position of Poltava in the bounds of North Temperate Zone defines the features of its continental climate. Average summer temperature is 20, 5 °C (68, 9°F), average winter temperature is – 7, 0°C (19, 4°F). Annual precipitation is 525 mm (20, 7 inches). The length of the non-frost period is 174 days.For the western suburbs of the city Chernozemic (Black Earth) and gray forest soils are typical, for the eastern one – turf and podzolic soils. Green plantations occupy more than 1/5 part of the city's area.
 Poltava is a city, where human population density is 3000 per km2. Approximately 87 per cent of the citizens are Ukrainians.Industrial branch of Poltava unites 11 main types of activity: energetic material extraction, food industry and agricultural products processing, light industry, wood industry, pulp and paper, poligraphic industry, publishing trade, chemical and oil industry, non-metal mineral production (building materials, grass), metallurgy, engine building, energy, gas and water production and allotment, et cetera.
For educational purposes, there are 54 secondary and 54 pre-school state and private educational establishments in Poltava. Here one can find 3 secondary schools and 9 pre-school educational establishments for handicapped children, 13 institutions for the gifted youth. 37 cultural organizations are functioning in the city, among them – 5 museums, 5 schools of aesthetic education, 3 clubs, 16 libraries, 3 cinemas, Palace Entertainment Lystopad, City House of Culture, City Park Peremoga, and City Brass Band Poltava. The main goal of the above mentioned establishments is to promote and encourage folk traditions, spiritual culture, national values, and to ensure aesthetic education of the following generation.
Among the personalities who define the cultural profile of Poltava one must mention, first of all, such writers as Ivan Kotlyarevsky, Panas Myrny, Volodymyr Korolenko, artists Mykola Jaroshenko, father and son the Myasoyedovs, scientists: mathematician Mykola Ostrogradsky, Doctor Mykola Sklifosovsky, Yurii Kondratyuk (O. Shargei) and many others who glorified Poltava with their creative work in different fields of human Endeavour.
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