Balakliia

Balakliia is a city in the Izium Raion of Kharkiv Oblast in eastern Ukraine, on the northeast side of the Siverskyi Donets river close to where the small Balakliika river joins it. It is an important railway junction of the oblast and hosts the Balakliia urban hromada. The land has been inhabited since ancient times, with Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements preserved, and the name comes from the river, whose Turkic name means fish river. Modern settlement began in 1663, when East Slavs populated it and it served as a guard post against Crimean Tatar raids. It had about 5,200 people in the early 20th century, received urban status in 1938, and had 32,117 inhabitants at the 2001 census. Until 2020 it was the administrative centre of Balakliia Raion, abolished in that year; its 2022 population was estimated at about 26,300.