Khmelnytskyi

Current name

• Ukrainian: Хмельницький, romanized: Khmelnytskyi IPA: [xmelʲˈnɪtsʲkɪi̯] ^ⓘ

Former names

• Płoskirów (also spelled Płoskirowce; (Polish: [pwɔsˈkiruf]; Ukrainian: Плоскирів, romanized: Ploskyriv; Polish: [plɔskiˈrɔftsɛ]; Ukrainian: Плоскирівці, romanized: Ploskyrivtsi)) 1431-1703
• Proskurov (also spelled Proskuriv; (Russian: Проскуровъ, Modern orthography: Проскуров, pronounced [prɐˈskurəf]; Ukrainian: Проскурів, romanized: Proskuriv [proˈskurʲiu̯])) 1793-1954

Name history

Khmelnytskyi

On 16 January 1954, Proskurov was renamed Khmelnytskyi by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR at the same time as Kamianets-Podilskyi Oblast was renamed to Khmelnytskyi Oblast. This occurred during celebrations for the Union of Russia and Ukraine Tercentenary, and according to the decree renaming the city, Khmelnytskyi was in honour of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Cossack hetman who rebelled against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Khmelnytsky Uprising. According to accounts, as part of the tercentenary, Pereiaslav was the first city chosen to be renamed, and it was decided after this that an administrative centre and its oblast would also be. Kyiv and Dnipro immediately declined alongside Vinnytsia, with three finalists for renaming coming up: Cherkasy, Ternopil, and Proskurov. Tymofii Lisovyi, the then first secretary of the Kamianets-Podilskyi obkom, there was hesitation between the three, with Ternopil not being chosen due to fears of reprisals because of the region's strong association with Ukrainian nationalism, while Cherkasy was also dropped because it was the birthplace of Taras Shevchenko. Thus, Proskurov was chosen, and it was also noted that the oblast already needed to be renamed since the administrative centre was no longer in Kamianets-Podilskyi after it was moved to Proskurov in 1941. Others justified it by saying that the Khmelnytsky Uprising had some battle sites nearby, although Khmelnytsky himself never actually visited Proskurov.

Ancient, medieval and early modern eras

The city foundation date is uncertain. The territory where Khmelnytskyi is situated has been inhabited for a very long time. Many archaeological discoveries have been made in the city suburbs. For example, to the East of Lezneve district, there was a settlement from the Bronze Age 2000 B.C., and from Scythian times from 7–3 century B.C. The first mention of the city was written with Cyrillic alphabet. The earliest known mention in historical sources was in 1431, when it was known as Płoskirów (Ploskirov, Плоскиров) and was part of the Kingdom of Poland. It was a royal city of Poland, administratively located in the Podolian Voivodeship in the Lesser Poland Province.

In 1550 King Sigismund II Augustus granted the town to standard-bearer Maciej Włodek as a reward for his military service. In 1578, King Stephen Bathory established weekly markets and three annual fairs. After the death of Stanisław Włodek, son of Maciej, Płoskirów became again a royal city of Poland. It was completely devastated during the Khmelnytsky Uprising, thus as of 1662 it had only 12 inhabitants, who did not pay any taxes. Płoskirów became a private town of the magnate Zamoyski family.

Polish rule was briefly interrupted by the Ottomans between 1672 and 1699. During this period, it was a subdivision of Mejibuji sanjak in Podolia Eyalet as Poloskiruf. The recovery of the city was halted by Ottoman rule. After Poland regained the city, the Zamoyski family came back and brought Poles from Mazovia to resettle the city, exempting the new inhabitants from taxes for the first few years. As of 1765, the city had furriers', weavers' and coopers' guilds. In 1775 King Stanisław August Poniatowski to help further rebuild the city established two additional annual fairs, each lasting two weeks.

19th and early 20th century

After the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, the city was annexed by the Russian Empire and was renamed Proskurov (Проскуров). Russification policies were enacted and intensified after the unsuccessful Polish uprisings of 1830–31 and 1863–65. Nevertheless, local Poles retained their language and customs, including folk costumes inspired by the Biłgoraj area. Writer Maria Dunin-Kozicka noted that Polish was still widely spoken in the city. According to the Russian census of 1897, Proskurov with a population of 22,855 was the fifth largest city of Podolia after Kamianets-Podilskyi, Uman, Vinnytsia and Balta.

With the fall of the Russian Empire, the city was contested by Poles, Ukrainians and Soviets. During that period, a series of anti-Jewish pogroms were carried out in the region, known together as the Proskurov pogrom. According to Vinnytsia's city archives, the pogrom was conducted on the Friday night of February 15, 1919, by one of the otamans (generals) of the Ukrainian People's Army, Otaman Semysenko (also rendered as Semesenko). Estimates vary as to the number of victims, some putting the death toll at 1,500 Jews in Proskurov alone, with 600 more killed in nearby Filshtein.

The Chief Otaman Petliura had been appointed head of state just two days prior to the tragedy, on February the 13th. Petliura issued Order 131 in which he mentioned the fact that numerous Jewish parties in Ukraine (Bund, Poale Zion, Folks-Partei, Unificationists) rose to defend the sovereignty of the Ukrainian Republic and were cooperating with the Ukrainian government. He condemned such pogroms, calling those initiating them deserters and enemies of the State that must be liquidated. The order was co-signed by the Chief of Staff, Otaman Yunakiv. The order was published in the Ukraina newspaper on February 20 (March 4, new style). Later, Petliura issued a special order to execute Semysenko for being the pogrom initiator. According to sources the order was carried out on March 20, 1920.^{[citation needed]} Other sources claim that he was released.

During the Schwartzbard trial, at the end of which Petliura's assassin was pardoned on the grounds of self-trail (revenge), the main argument of the defense was that Schwartzbard had acted as an avenger of the Jews killed in pogroms perpetrated during Petliura's rule.

During the Polish–Soviet War, in the first half of 1920 the city was controlled by Poland as part of the Podolian District, and afterwards it passed to Soviet Ukraine.

Interwar period

As part of korenizatsiia, in 1924, a Polish village council was established in the then village of Hrechany (Polish: Hreczany; now a district of the city), whose entire population was Polish. Hrechany was designed to become the capital of a new Polish National District, however, the plan was abandoned by the Soviet authorities. In 1936, part of the Polish population was expelled to Kazakhstan. During the Polish Operation of the NKVD, the local Polish population was persecuted with mass deportations and executions. It was one of two cities in Podolia where the most Poles were executed (alongside Kamianets-Podilskyi).

World War II

At the start of World War II, on 11 September 1939, the Ukrainian Front of the Red Army was formed shortly before the Soviet invasion on Poland, and its headquarters was located in Proskuriv.

The town was occupied by the German Army from July 8, 1941 to March 25, 1944. On November 4, 1941, 5300 Jewish inhabitants of the town and surrounding villages were shot by an Einsatzgruppe. A ghetto was formed on December 14, 1941, where all surviving Jewish inhabitants had to resettle and were subjected to forced labor. They were subsequently killed in the fall of 1942. More than 9500 Jews were killed in the town in total. Some remaining local Poles were deported by the German occupiers to forced labour in Germany. Since 1943, Poles, who were previously deported east from Proskuriv by the Soviets, were allowed to join the Polish People's Army, and many joined.

Postwar period

In 1954 the city was finally renamed Khmelnytskyi (Хмельницький) in the honor of the 300th anniversary of a treaty negotiated by Bohdan Khmelnytsky.

Khmelnytskyi was home to the 19th Division of the 43rd Rocket Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces during the Cold War. The intercontinental ballistic missile silos of the division that were housed there were removed and destroyed, partially with U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction funding, during the 1990s.

After new archival sources had been presented at the 2006 conference City of Khmelnytskyi in the Context of Ukrainian History post-dated the city’s earliest mention from 1493 to 1431, it changed its official 513th anniversary commemoration to its 575th.

Until 18 July 2020, Khmelnytskyi was incorporated as a city of oblast significance and served as the administrative center of Khmelnytskyi Raion though it did not belong to the raion. In July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Khmelnytskyi Oblast to three, the city of Khmelnytskyi was merged into Khmelnytskyi Raion.

Russian invasion of Ukraine

On 10 October 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the city was targeted by Russian cruise missiles as part of a major retaliation strike for the Crimean Bridge explosion, causing a blackout in the city and limiting water supply.

During a missile attack on 31 December, a gas station and a military facility inside the city was hit by two Russian cruise missiles, killing at least one civilian and wounding nine. The attack also caused a partial blackout and damaged more than a dozen cars and several residential buildings, including a kindergarten.

On 23 February 2023, Russian forces hit Khmelnytskyi with 3 Iranian-made UAVs of the "Shahed type", killing one person and wounding four. Additionally, the attack caused a fire and damaged multiple buildings.

Climate

The climate of Khmelnytskyi is moderately continental. The average temperature of Khmelnytskyi in its warmest month (July) is 20 to 22 °C (68 to 72 °F), and the average temperature in the coldest month (January) is −5 to −6 °C (23 to 21 °F). The maximum temperatures in the summer on average reaches 36 to 38 °C (97 to 100 °F), and the minimum temperatures in the winter on average is −24 to −30 °C (−11 to −22 °F). Khmelnytskyi's average annual temperature is 7 to 8 °C (45 to 46 °F). Khmelnytskyi's average annual precipitation is 510 to 580 mm (20.08 to 22.83 in).

Language

Distribution of the population by native language according to the 2001 census:

According to a survey conducted by the International Republican Institute in April–May 2023, 88% of the city's population spoke Ukrainian at home, and 9% spoke Russian.

Transportation

Local transportation

Trolleybuses

Khmelnytskyi has a trolleybus system which is operated by the municipal enterprise KP "Elektrotrans". Construction of the depot for the network first began in 1968, which was followed by the network in 1970 under K.S. Karlov. The trolleybus system first operated on 24 December 1970 with a route from Kation plant to the railway station, with the fleet consisting of twelve Kyiv-6 trolleybuses from the Kyiv Electric Transport Plant (KZET). The line for route 1 was first extended in 1971 to School No. 9, with new routes following: 2 (in 1972), 3 (in 1973), 4 (sometime later, extended in 1990). By the early 2000s, Khmelnytskyi had 133 different trolleybuses currently in active service. In 2012, the number of routes was 19, and a 2024 survey by the state gave the system as having 99.8 km of network, one depot, 26 routes, and 10 traction substations. The annual ridership of the system is 14,837,596 as of 2022.

Like most cities, the fleet was replaced starting in the late 2010s. This first occurred in March 2018, when seven new Bohdan trolleybuses were introduced into the routes, and the older ZiU-9s were restored. Bohdan later leased ten T701s in 2019, which were able to run autonomously. As part of partnerships with other cities, second-hand Czech trolleys like Škoda 24Tr Irisbus and Škoda 25Tr were given to the city in 2022 and 2023. As part of a project with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, loans were also brought in for new trolleys and for revamping the depot, with the tender for the new trolleys being won by the domestic Chernihiv Bus Factory and Politekhnoservis (which works with retrofitting), who agreed to provide 42 trolleybuses, all of which would run autonomously. The first Etalon-T12240 arrived in April 2025, with 20 being delivered by September, and the last arriving in May 2026.

Current routes

As of 2021, the city operates twenty-six different routes for trolleybuses:

• Route No. 1: Silistra to Polyclinic No. 1
• Route No. 1A: Staromiska St. to Interregional Academy of Personnel Management
• Route No. 2A: Kation to Ozerna
• Route No. 3: Ozerna to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 4: Kation to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 4A: Kation to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 5: Shevchenka St. to Zarichanska St.
• Route No. 7: Kation to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 7A: Kation to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 8: VO "Almaz" to Staromiska St.
• Route No. 8A: VO "Almaz" to Ozerna
• Route No. 9: Zarichanska St. to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 10: Ozerna to Shopping Centre
• Route No. 11: Kation to Ozerna
• Route No. 11A: Kation to Ozerna
• Route No. 12: Kation to Ozerna
• Route No. 13: VO "Almaz" to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 14: Kation to Bus Station No. 2
• Route No. 15: Staromiska St. to P. Bolbochan St.
• Route No. 15A: P. Bolbochan St. to Bus Station No. 2
• Route No. 16: Kation to VO "Almaz"
• Route No. 17: Kation to Bus Station No. 1
• Route No. 18: VO "Almaz" to Bus Station No. 1
• Route No. 19: Kamianetska St. to Dovzhenka St.
• Route No. 20: Ozerna to Staromiska St.
• Route No. 56: VO "Almaz" to Bus Station No. 1
• Route No. 57: VO "Almaz" to P. Bolbochan St.

City buses

Khmelnytskyi has both suburban city buses and intercity bus service alongside Marshrutkas operating within the city. The municipal enterprise for city buses, KP "Elektrotrans", has 10 routes with 13 buses as of 2012. Another enterprise, the enterprise for the organisation of city passenger transport, organises 40 routes with 387 vehicles. There are three main bus stations for intercity routes. The first is Bus Station No. 1 at Vinnytske Shosse 23, which is the largest, with 180 destinations, including most nearby domestic cities, and is a stop for international routes to Warsaw, Kraków, and Prague. The second is Bus Station No. 2 at Shevchenka Street 66, which serves 114 destinations and mainly operates domestic routes, most of which are to Kyiv. The third is Bus Station No. 3 at Prymakova Street 29, which serves 61 destinations, mostly suburban routes.

Former trams

Khmelnytskyi itself never had a tram system, but it was continuously proposed over the years. The first attempt was in 1899, when the merchant Davyd Nirenberg drew up plans for the construction of one after Zhytomyr, and Nirenberg pushed for electrifying the city to make one. It took until 1910 for a competition to electrify the city, during which Nirenberg also brought up the idea of a tram after electrification from Kamianetska Street to the railway station. Nirenberg's idea was shot down by the proposal of engineer Elem-Nisan Rabinovych, who did not consider a tram during electrification. The closest thing to a tram was a German railcar from Khemlnytskyi to Hrechany that existed in the late 1800s to early 1900s, which locals called a tram.

Railways

Khmelnytskyi is a major stop on the Zhmerynka Directorate of Southwestern Railways, with traffic going through the electrified section of Zhmerynka to Hrechany (which is a neighbourhood of Khmelnytskyi). Thus, it has connections to almost every other major city domestically. As of 2018, the city handles 1.8 million long-distance railway passengers a year, making the Khmelnytskyi railway station the 9th busiest in Ukraine. The line from Khmelnytskyi to Lysychansk, which is provided by train No. 138/137, was also ranked as the second busiest line in the country at 950,800 passengers (after Uzhhorod to Lysychansk).

Railway service first began in the city in 1870, with a line from Zhmerynka to the city continuing on to Volochysk, with a station being built on the wasteland near the Letychiv road. Although initially the stop was only regional and did not have much traffic, renewed construction for the railway line began in the city in 1909 with the opening of Podilska Railway. Podilska opened a line to Shepetivka in 1913, one to Kamianets-Podilskyi in 1914, and to other cities in 1916. Hrechany, which was a village near Khmelnytskyi at the time but later annexed and incorporated as a neighbourhood, also got its own depot and freight station in 1914. After the war, the stations in the city were restored by 1924. The old main station for the city was demolished in 1951, and was replaced, with additional additions in 1984 of an office and ticket halls to increase the capacity of the station. The Zhmerynka to Khmelnytskyi line was electrified in 1997, with Pidvolochysk to Hrechany following in 1998. In February 2020, it was announced that the city's main railway station would be offered as a concession for 20 years because maintaining the station costs over 500 million hryvnias a year. The following year, it was announced that the station would be modernised to conduct high-speed rail to the border with Poland.

Air transport

The city is served by the Khmelnytskyi Airport. Prior to the airport, there was a separate squadron deployed in the city starting in 1952, which belonged to the 98th Detachment of the Chernivtsi Aviation Enterprise of the Ukrainian Civil Aviation Administration and had its own airfield. On the basis of the squadron and the airfield, an airport was eventually created, which launched its first flight (a Yak-40) in 1984. Eventually, at least by 1991, the airport had passenger terminals and a customs post. After independence, the airport fell into disrepair; the terminal was abandoned, and it was split between enterprises. Nevertheless, between 1994 and 2009, it still handled 80,000 passengers and 2,000 tons of cargo. It continued to hold a Class "B" certificate, which permitted small and medium planes, with the last international flight from the airport to Turkey, departing in 2010, and after this only An-2 aircraft occasionally flew from it. In 2012, the airport lost its flight certificate, and thus completely stopped flights. After three years, it was announced that there were going to be reconstruction plans, but in the end nothing happened.

In 2017, the oblast council announced an attempted revival of the enterprise, allocating millions of hryvnias, mostly for the enterprise's debts. The following year, the area was cleared of overgrowth, with work underway on repairing the runway, taxiway, and checkpoint. The runway was cleared for some An-2 and An-24 aircraft in October 2018, and the airport eventually signed an agreement to receive small aircraft in August 2018. The first of these occurred on 31 March 2019, and in February 2021 the State Aviation Service of Ukraine issued the re-inspection order. In the end, it was allowed to operate small aircraft, although it didn't get back its full certificate. After this, the oblast council approved more millions of hryvnias for the airport, with Nova Poshta being declared a potential cargo operator and a Turkish company being said to invest in a new terminal. However, all efforts were suspended in 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine since Ukraine closed its airspace to civilian flights.

Roads and bridges

The international European route , which goes from Stryi to Kropyvnytskyi, crosses through the city. The Ukrainian international highway M30, which goes through the city's airport to Dnipro. Prior to its merger, M12 also passed through the city as a bypass at the airport. In terms of the T-network, the territorial route, the city is also connected to four roads: T-10-25 (which connects the city to Pereyaslav and is 40.2 km long), T-10-32 (which connects the city to Pereyaslav also and M-03 and is 19.4 km long), T-23-05 (which connects the city to Dashkivtsi and is 63 km long), and T-23-11 (which connects the city to Volochysk and is 59.5 km long). The city has a bypass road as part of M-30 on the southern and eastern parts of the city. The construction of another bypass road in the north is planned. There are also more than two dozen bridges in Khmelnytskyi. The longest, as of 2016, is an overpass on Zapadno-Okruzhnaya and is 200 metres long, the smallest is one over the drainage ditch on Horodna Street and is 9 metres long, the oldest is one over Starokostiantynivske Highway and is 72 years old, and the youngest is the overpass on Hrushevskoho Street and is 11 years old.

Energy

As Khmelnytskyi does not have a large CHPP, it uses small Cogeneration units, which were first installed in 2003. There were thirteen of these units before the Russian invasion, but since the invasion, this number has increased to 25. They are dispersed throughout the neighbourhoods and are linked together with cable networking and produce around 33.6 million kWh. There are also some solar power plants, 15 of them, which are mostly located on the roofs of cities. Heating is primarily organised by the enterprise "Pivdenno-Zakhidni teplomerezhi". The city has 70 different boiler houses, which are linked into a network, with some more remote boiler houses also being used just to keep the network from freezing.

Water and sanitation

Water supply and sewage are provided by the municipal enterprise ""Khmelnytskvodokanal", which was created on 7 September 1993. Most of the water comes from Chernelivka, although the city has reserves in case of emergeencies (Kudrianka, Tsentralna, Zakhidna, Pivdenna, Sharovechka). The city operates 70 wells, 9 water pumping stations, 387.34 km of sewage pipes, 24 sewage pumping stations, and 2 treatment sites.

Medicine

There are seven city hospitals. Some of them are: the City Hospital, Infectious Diseases Hospital, Perinatal Centre, and City Children's Hospital. There is also an oblast-wide Khmelnytskyi Regional Hospital. The regional hospital was formed in 1948, and recently it was combined with the Regional Centre for the Prevention and Control of AIDS, the Dermatovenereological Centre, and the Pathology Centre.

Sport

• Vitaliy Balytskyi (1978–2018) a Ukrainian football player with 297 club caps
• Dmytro Bezotosnyi (born 1983) a Ukrainian football goalkeeper with over 300 club caps.
• Lyudmyla Holovchenko (born 1978) a retired amateur Ukrainian freestyle wrestler
• Dmytro Ianchuk (born 1992) sprint canoeist and bronze medallist at the 2016 Summer Olympics
• Andriy Kirlik (born 1974) footballer with over 350 club caps and an ordained deacon
• Ruslan Kostyshyn (born 1977) a Ukrainian retired footballer with 547 club caps
• Leonid Krupnik (born 1979) an American-Israeli former soccer player with over 300 club caps, and current coach.
• Oksana Masters (born 1989), American Paralympic rower and cross-country skier
• Serhei Nahorny (born 1956) sprint canoeist, silver and gold medallist at the 1976 Summer Olympics
• Vita Palamar (born 1977) a female high jumper from Ukraine.
• Serhiy Petrenko (born 1956) sprint canoeist, twice gold medallist at the 1976 Summer Olympics
• Olga Polyuk (born 1987), freestyle skier, specializing in aerials, three time Olympian.
• Bohdan Shershun (1981–2024), footballer with over 330 club caps and 4 for Ukraine

Twin towns – sister cities

Khmelnytskyi is twinned with:

In addition, Khmelnytskyi also developed solidary partnership with Stuttgart and Dresden in Germany and Strasbourg in France.

In January 2016, the Khmelnytskyi city council terminated its twinned relations with the Russian cities Tver and Ivanovo due to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014–present).