Dnieper River Cruise Holidays

Like its big sister the Volga, the Dnieper (Dnipro in Ukrainian) rises in a swampy district at the foot of the Valdai hills to the northwest of Moscow. With a length of 2,200 km (1,367 miles), it is the third-longest river in Europe. It traces two huge loops through Byelorussia and the Ukraine before entering the Black Sea by a wide estuary with the town of Kherson on its right bank.

In the 8th to 11th centuries, Vikings (or Varangians) from Scandinavia invaded and settled parts of Ukraine and Russia. They established the first trading posts on the river to provide access to the markets of the Orient. Consequently the great river became known as the Varangian highway to Greece, or more attractively, the “amber route”. In the years following Russia’s October Revolution, the course of the Dnieper was much modified. Five dams were constructed, turning the river into a virtually continuous chain of lakes which provided irrigation for new agricultural lands and power for new hydroelectric stations.

But the history of the Ukraine and the Dnieper is also closely linked to that of the Cossacks, who defended the independence of their country against the Turks, the Poles and even the tsars from their stronghold on an island close to Zaporozhye.

River cruises begin at Kiev, “the mother of Russian cities”. You will pass through vast forests and steppes and a rich agricultural region: the Ukraine once known as the granary of the Soviet Union. Along the way, historic sites and modern industrial complexes will slide by before you reach Yalta and Odessa, legendary towns on the shores of the Black Sea.

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