Great Meadow, Ukraine

The Great Meadow (Ukrainian: Великий луг, romanized: Velykyi luh) is a lowland area on the Dnieper and the Konka to the south of Khortytsia Island that historically consisted of a system of rivers, reed beds, swamps, flooded forests, and meadows. The Great Meadow ceased to exist in 1950s, when it was flooded by the Kakhovka Reservoir, and re-emerged in 2023 upon the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Great Meadow was located on the Black Sea Lowland and surrounded by the Pontic–Caspian steppe. It was around 20 kilometres (12 mi) wide and 100 kilometres (62 mi) long.^[1] It originally consisted of a system of interconnected rivers and tributaries, reed-covered lakes and swamps, meadows, shrubs, and, in some places, high sandbanks. Both the banks of the Dnieper were forested.^[2] The Great Meadow was covered with floodplains and forests containing aspen, alder, willow, and oak. Ancient oak tress grew on those islands that rarely flooded. The area was inhabited by hares, foxes, deer, wild pigs, martens, and wolves.^[1][3]

The Russian word lug is equivalent to the Ukrainian luka (feminine, plural – luky), or obolon. The word describes an area of grassland along a river that is periodically flooded. A separate word—lug—was used in Ukrainian, distinct from the concept of luka, to describe a regularly-flooded forest. The term Veliky Lug came to mean an ancient floodplain forest that surrounded a Cossack stronghold (sich).^{[3][note 1]}

The Great Meadow was inhabited since ancient times, with some findings dating back to the Bronze Age, the Scythian period, and the Kievan Rus'.^[4] It is a notable landscape due to its historical association with the Cossacks.^[2]

The metropolis of Scythia, which flourished during the 6th to 4th centuries BC) was located in what is now modern Kamianka-Dniprovska.^{[2][note 2]}

The 14th-century Kuchuhurske settlement, the largest known settlement of the Golden Horde on the Dnieper that is generally identified as the city of Mamai-Sarai, was located in the Great Meadow.^[5] In 1374, after a drought led to famine throughout the region, Mamai's forces left the Great Meadow and resettled in Crimea.^[2]

In 16th–18th centuries, the Great Meadow was one of the most important areas of the Zaporozhian Sich.^[1] It is nowadays considered to be “an inclusive part of the formation of the modern Ukrainian ethnos”.^[6]

In contrast to the surrounding dry steppe, the Great Meadow was permanently inhabited by the Zaporozhian Cossacks,^[7] who called it Father.^{[4][note 3]} The area was used for agriculture, raising livestock, and as a source of wood, and the dense forest served to protect the Cossacks from external threats.^[7] The Cossacks were the first to plant forests in Europe, which they grew as a means of defence.^[4] Six of the eight sichs (Cossack military bases and administrative centres) were located in the Great Meadow:^[2]

• Tomakivka Sich, established during the late 16th century.
• Bazavluk Sich (1593–1638), a large base situated on Bazavluk Island. It was destroyed by troops led by the Polish Hetman Mikołaj Potocki.
• Mykytyn Sich, where the 17th-century commander Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the Cossacks to attack the Poles.
• Chortomlyk Sich (1652–1709), which became prominent during the time of Ivan Sirko, who resided here from 1663. Peter the Great ordered that the sich be destroyed following the Cossacks' alignment with Ivan Mazepa.
• Kamianka Sich (1709–1711 and 1728–1734), the only Sich whose features, including the council square, the treasury, workshops, houses, shops, and a tavern, have surviving remains.
• Nova Sich (1734–1775), built with the permission from the prominent Cossack Ivan Malashevych. At one time it was fortified with an 3.5 to 4 metres (11 to 13 ft) tall earth rampart.

During the Holodomor, inhabitants of the Great Meadow were saved from starvation by foraging for roots and water nuts.^[2]

Prior to the 1950s, only 20% of the Great Meadow was forested, which led to the modern perception of the area as mainly consisting of meadows.^[3]

In 1956, the Kakhovka Dam was completed,^[9] and he Kakhovka reservoir—the largest in Ukraine at that time—was created. Approximately 230 kilometres (140 mi) long and 25 kilometres (16 mi) wide with a volume of 18.2 cubic kilometres (4.4 cu mi), and a total area of 2,155 square kilometres (832 sq mi), its creation caused irreversible damage to the Great Meadow, which covered almost the entire area,^[6][10] including the destruction of over 90 villages.^[7] Around 37,000 residents were forced to resettle.^[2] In return, the reservoir provided irrigation to vast areas of southern Ukraine, and the dam generated some electricity.^[7]

In 2006, the Grand Meadow National Nature Park was created from small islands and coastal areas of eastern Kakhovka Reservoir in Zaporizhzhia Oblast,^[11] and similarly the Kamianka Sich National Nature Park was formed in 2019 in right-bank Kherson Oblast.^[12]

In June of 2023, the Kakhovka Dam was destroyed, and the reservoir began to drain away.^[13] In 2023, as the waters were leaving the reservoir, tributaries of the Dnieper River, islands, and Cossack tracks reappeared.^[3] Archaeological looting became widespread soon after the reservoir was emptied,^[14] and the draining of the reservoir led to the fish population dying out, totaling an estimated 11,400 tons of dead fish.^[10]

Shortly after the dam was breached, biologists from Kherson State University’s Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group and the M. G. Kholodny Institute of Botany of the National Academy of Sciences began a long-term study of the ecological development of the drained area.^[3] On 12 March 2024, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers banned the transfer of ownership or use of land that emerged from the former reservoir due to plans of restoring the dam.^[13]

According to the Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Alfiorov, “…we still cannot assess the consequences of over 70 years of water domination in it. Now, we can see this relief, it is obvious that we will also see burial mounds, but we cannot yet assess, for example, the degree of damage and siltation of the territory. There is no doubt that most of the archaeological monuments were destroyed when the Kakhovka reservoir was created.”^[4]

The destruction of the dam coincided with the time when poplar and willow trees begin to disperse their seeds.^[3] By summer of 2024, the area previously covered by the Great Meadow was producing a continuous young willow forest, and was started to become repopulated by animals. The area will go through ecological succession that, in at least 30 years, will result in the formation of a mature forest. This large-scale phenomenon allows the study of the development of forest ecosystems in river valleys that was not possible before.^[15] The ecosystem currently being restored may resemble the state of the Lower Dnieper valley before it was settled by humans.^[3]

The Ukrainian government considers the HPP at Kakhovka to be a valuable capital asset, and intends in time for it to be fully restored, despite the negative ecological and socio-economic impact this would have.^[6] Hydrologists and power engineers support the reconstruction of the dam, but ecologists, historians, and archaeologists resist the idea and propose to restore area once occupied by the Great Meadow into a protected natural and historic area.^[7][16]

• Babak, V.P.; Zaporozhets, Artur O., eds. (2024). Power Engineering and Environmental Safety. Systems, Decision and Control in Energy VI. Vol. 2. Springer. ISBN 978-3-031-67091-6.

• LeDonne, John P. (2003). The Grand Strategy of the Russian Empire, 1650-1831. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-534769-2.
• Shevchuk, Vasyl Yakovych; Bilyavsky, Georgiy Oleksiyovich; Navrotsky, Vasyl Mykolayovych; Mazurkevich, Oleksandr Oleksandrovych (2004). Preserving the Dnipro River: Harmony, history and RehabilitHtion. Oakville, Canada: Mosaic Press. ISBN 9780889628274.
• Truth Hounds (2024). Dmitri, Koval (ed.). Submerged: Study of the Destruction of the Kakhovka Dam. Project Expedite Justice. Retrieved 15 February 2026.
• Tsymbalyuk, Darya (2025). Ecocide in Ukraine: The Environmental Cost of Russia's War. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ISBN 978-1-5095-6251-0.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Great Meadow (Ukraine).

• "The second spring for Velikiy Lug: what is happening on the banks of the Kakhovka reservoir" from Suspilne (in Ukrainian)
• 1:500000 French military maps of Russia produced in 1812 (Ekatérinoslav, C.9. / Kherson, mer d'Azov, C.10. cover the area of the Great Meadow) in Carte de la Russie Européenne en LXXVII feuilles exécutée au Dépôt général de la Guerre from the BnF (website and maps in French)