Polesia
Polesia (also spelt
Polesie or
Polesye) is one of the largest European
swampy areas, located in the South-Western part of the
Eastern-European Lowland, mainly within the territories of
Belarus,
Ukraine but also partly within
Poland and
Russia. The swamp areas of Polesia are known as the
Pripyat Marshes (after the
Pripyat River) or
Pinsk Marshes (after the major local city of
Pinsk).
The name Polesia is from a
Slavic root and loosely translates as "
woodland".
Polesie is the
Polish spelling; ,
Paleśsie; ,
Polissja; ,
Poles'e;
Latin:
Polesia.
An inhabitant of Polesia is called
Palašuk in Belarusian,
Polishchuk in the local Ukrainian dialect,
Poleszuk in Polish,
Poleshchuk in Russian.
Polesia is a marshy region lining the
Pripyat River in Southern Belarus (
Brest,
Pinsk,
Kalinkavichy,
Homel), Northern Ukraine (in the
Volyn,
Rivne,
Zhytomyr,
Kiev, and
Chernihiv Oblasts), and partly in Poland (
Lublin) and Russia (
Bryansk). It is a
flatland within the
watersheds of the
Western Bug and
Prypyat rivers. The two rivers are connected by the
Dnieper-Bug Canal, built during the reign of
Stanisław August Poniatowski, the last king of the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
Notable tributaries of the Pripyat are the
Horyn (
Goryn),
Stokhod (
Stokhod,
Stokhid),
Styr,
Ptyč,
Jasielda (
Jasolda) rivers. The largest towns in the Pripyat basin are
Pinsk,
Stolin,
Davyd-Haradok. Huge marshes were reclaimed from the
1960s to
'80s for
farmland. The reclamation is believed to have harmed the environment along the course of the Pripyat.
This region suffered severely from the
Chernobyl accident. Huge areas were polluted by
radioactive elements and are considered unsuitable for living.
