Vovchansk

Vovchansk is a city in Chuhuiv Raion of Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, on the Vovcha river, a tributary of the Siverskyi Donets, in the historic region of Sloboda Ukraine. The settlement began in 1674 as a guarding outpost for Ukrainian migrants who were given land belonging to Belgorod Monastery, and it was granted town status in 1780, the year the Ukrainian parliament counts as its official founding. A railway line reached it in 1896, and in the twentieth century it grew into a district centre with a carriage factory, food plants and a title as seat of its own raion until the 2020 administrative reform folded that raion into Chuhuiv Raion. Its population was about 17,500 in 2022, but the city was occupied in the first days of the 2022 invasion, retaken that September, and then largely destroyed in the 2024 Kharkiv offensive, which left only a few hundred residents and later none.