, with
Dzikie Pole (the Wild Fields) identified in upper portion of the map. In the 6th to 8th centuries AD the first settlements of Slavs appeared on the banks of the Dnieper within the region. During the period of
Kievan Rus' (9th to 12th centuries AD) the Dnieper River functioned as one of the main trade corridors of medieval Eastern Europe, part of the route
"from the Varangians to the Greeks", which connected the Baltic Sea region with the
Crimea and with the capital of
Byzantium,
Constantinople. The Dnieper also served as a major route for transporting the armies of Kyiv princes on their way to the Byzantine coastal cities in the early 9th and late 9th centuries. At the beginning of the 15th century,
Tatar tribes inhabiting the right bank of the Dnieper were driven away by the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania. However, by the mid-15th century, the
Nogai (who lived north of the
Sea of Azov) and the
Crimean Khanate invaded these lands. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Crimean Khanate agreed to a border along the Dnieper, and farther east along the
Samara River, i.e. through what is today the city of Dnipro. At this time there appeared a new force, the
Cossacks – armed free men not subject to any feudal lord – who soon came to dominate the region. They later became known as
Zaporozhian Cossacks, from
Zaporizhzhia, the lands south of
Naddniprianshchyna (Zaporizhzhia translates to "the Land Beyond the
Rapids"). This period of raids and fighting caused considerable devastation and
depopulation in the
Pontic steppe; the area became known as the "Wilderness" or the "
Wild Fields". In 1635, the
Polish government built the
Kodak fortress above the
Dnieper Rapids at
Kodaky, partly as a result of rivalry in the region between Poland,
Turkey and the
Crimean Khanate, and partly to maintain control over Cossack activity (i.e. to suppress the Cossack raiders and to prevent peasants moving out of the area). On the night of 3 or 4 August 1635, the Cossacks of
Ivan Sulyma captured the fort by surprise, burning it down and butchering the garrison of about 200 West European mercenaries under Jean Marion. for the Polish government in 1638, had a mercenary garrison. Under the
Treaty of Pereyaslav of 1654, the territory came within the sphere of influence of the Moscow-based
Tsardom of Russia. In 1774
Prince Grigori Potemkin was appointed governor of
Novorossiysk Governorate, and after the
destruction of the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775, he started founding cities in the region and encouraging foreign settlers. The city of
Yekaterinoslav (present-day Dnipro) was founded in 1776, not in its current location, but at the confluence of the
River Samara with the River Kil'chen' at
Loshakivka, north of the Dnieper. On May 8, 1775, after the end of the
Russian-Turkish War of 1768 to 1774, Russian authorities opened a
postal station and track which linked
Kremenchuk city, the
Kinburn foreland and
Ochakiv, all locations of the Imperial Russian Army. In December 1796, Emperor
Paul I re-established the Novorossiysk Governorate, mostly with land from the former
Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty. In 1802, this province was divided into the
Nikolayev Governorate (known as the Kherson Governorate from 1803),
Yekaterinoslav Governorate, and the
Taurida Governorate. The capital of the Yekaterinoslav Governorate was the city of
Yekaterinoslav (modern Dnipro). It was located within the former lands of the
Zaporizhian Sich. The governorate bordered to the north with the
Kharkov Governorate and
Poltava Governorate, to the west and southwest with the
Kherson Governorate, to the south with the
Taurida Governorate and
Sea of Azov, and to the east with the
Don Host Oblast.
Olexander Paul (1832–1890) discovered iron ore and initiated smelting, and this became the core of a developing a mining district. In 1874 Emperor
Alexander II initiated the founding project of a railway, running . This enabled transportation directly to the nearest factories and greatly sped up the development of the region. , in 1910 On 1 August 1925, the Yekaterinoslav Governorate administration was discontinued, and in 1926 the city of Yekterinoslav was renamed Dnipropetrovsk after Ukrainian Soviet
leader Grigory Petrovsky. Before the introduction of oblasts in 1932, the
Ukrainian SSR comprised 40
okrugs, which had replaced the former Russian Imperial
guberniya (governorate) subdivisions. In 1932 the territory of the Ukrainian SSR was re-organized into oblasts. The first oblasts were
Vinnytsia Oblast,
Kyiv Oblast,
Odesa Oblast,
Kharkiv Oblast, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Soon after that, in the summer of 1932,
Donetsk Oblast was formed out of eastern parts of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. During the
Holodomor in the 1930s, more than 200
collective farms in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast were put on
"Blackboards" which implied a complete blockade of trade and food-aid to villages under-performing in fulfilling grain-procurement quotas; a number representing more than half of all such "Blackboards" throughout all of the Ukrainian SSR. During the
1991 referendum, 90.36% of votes in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast favored the
Declaration of Independence of Ukraine. A survey conducted in December 2014 by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found 2.2% of the oblast's population supported their region joining Russia, 89.9% did not support the idea, and the rest were undecided or did not respond. The city of Dnipropetrovsk was renamed "Dnipro" in May 2016 as part of the
decommunization laws enacted a year earlier. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast could not be renamed at the time because it is mentioned by name in the
Constitution of Ukraine and accordingly, could only be renamed through a
constitutional amendment. In April 2018 a group of over a hundred deputies formally initiated a proposal in the
Ukrainian Parliament to change the name to
Sicheslav Oblast (); in February 2019, the Verkhovna Rada voted to officially amend the Constitution, thus granting state sanction to the name change. Later that year the Constitutional Court officially approved the change. The oblast's administrative centre and largest city,
Dnipro, had had the unofficial name "Sicheslav" (commemorating the
Zaporizhian Sich) in 1918–21 during the
Ukrainian War of Independence. Since then, the renaming process has stalled (), for reasons such as the 2019
presidential and
parliamentary elections, the
COVID-19 pandemic and the
Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022 onwards) with the supplementing
martial law. During the Russian invasion, the cities of
Dnipro,
Kryvyi Rih, and
Nikopol, among other locations in the region, were bombed by Russia. It was also reported that Russian troops were pushed from areas near Dnipropetrovsk Oblast and Kherson Oblast, near the border. One village bordering Kherson Oblast,
Hannivka, may have been occupied and liberated by Ukrainian forces by May 2022. Between 2022 and 2024, there was no further ground fighting and the oblast had remained completely under Ukrainian control. In June 2025, the
Institute for the Study of War confirmed that Russian troops entered Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. ==Administrative subdivisions==