According to legends, Hostomel has existed since ancient times and was called Ostromyr. But, the first written mention of it dates back to 1494. In 1495, the Grand Duke of Lithuania
Alexander gave Hostomel to Prince
Ivan Dashkevych Lvovich Hlynsky. In 1509, after the betrayal of the Hlynski to the Muscovites, the estate of king
Sigismund I was given to . In 1614, King
Sigismund III of Poland granted Hostomel the
Magdeburg right. The village of Hostomel received city rights with the assistance of the owner – Stanislav Kharlensky, the son of Kyiv Chamberlain Felix. During the national liberation war under the leadership of
Bohdan Khmelnytsky, it became the Cossack hundredth town of the Kyiv regiment. In 1654, the town was captured by Muscovy. In 1694, a church was built here. In July 1768, 's
haydamaks visited the town. Around 1850, Dominique Pierre de la Flise visited Mostyshche. In 1866 Hostomel became a township center, actively developing. It witnessed many historical events related to the past of Ukraine. In 1962, Hostomel and other settlements were subordinated to
Irpin (it was granted the status of a city of regional significance). In 1972, the village of Mostyshche became a part of Hostomel. Until 18 July 2020, Hostomel belonged to
Irpin Municipality. In July 2020, as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Kyiv Oblast to seven, Irpin Municipality was merged into Bucha Raion.
2022 Russian invasion On 24 February 2022, the first day of the
2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Hostomel and the
Hostomel Airport were
attacked by the Russian military in an attempt to capture the town. Ukrainian President
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that "a Russian airborne force in Hostomel airport outside Kyiv, which has a big runway, has been stopped and is being destroyed." On 24 February the Ukrainian military chief,
Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said "a battle is raging in Hostomel". The
Antonov 225 plane (Mriya), the world's biggest cargo plane, was destroyed when the hangar it was in was ravaged by the Russians forces, presumably through
shelling and
artillery. In the following week the Russians started to use Hostomel as a
forward operating base to attack Kyiv, the troops sent to Kyiv met Ukrainian forces in
Bucha and
Irpin, multiple Russian units were destroyed by artillery and
Bayraktar drone strikes, Ukrainian forces also pushed the frontline back into Hostomel, with
Ukrainian Special Forces launching raids against
Kadyrovtsy on 27 February, and
VDV mechanized units along the week. On 7 March 2022, Russian troops killed mayor
Yuriy Prylypko while he was delivering food and medicines in the city. Ukrainian counteroffensives were unable to fully retake the town, however a major Russian withdrawal from Kyiv Oblast in late March and early April saw the town completely retaken from Russian forces. On April 6, the head of the Hostomel settlement military administration, Taras Dumenko, reported that four hundred people had gone missing in 35 days of Russian occupation of Hostomel. On 20 November 2022,
Verkhovna Rada approved the project of promoting Hostomel's status from urban-type settlement to city. On 20 October 2023,
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a law that abolished urban-type settlement status, according to which Hostomel became a rural settlement. This law has come into effect on 26 January 2024, three months after it was signed. == Population ==