Samar, Ukraine

A city with the name Samar (now known as Old Samar) has existed from the end of the 17th century. The Cossacks abandoned the town in 1688 when Russia built the Bohorodytska Fortress in the city. Soon after, the former inhabitants of the Old Samar founded another settlement named Samar upstream the Samara River. In 18th-century documents, the city is also named Samarchyk, Novoselytsia or Palanka. The town was the administrative center of the (province) of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. In 1777, a town named Yekaterinoslav, meaning "the glory of Catherine" (after Russian empress Catherine II), was built on the location. The site was badly chosen – spring waters transformed the city into a bog. The surviving settlement was in 1794 renamed to Novomoskovsk. The city name Yekaterinoslav was given to current Dnipro. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the city council voted in January 2024 to rename Novomoskovsk to Nova Samar (). On 19 September 2024, the Supreme Council of Ukraine voted to rename Novomoskovsk to Samar. ==Demographics==

In 2001, Samar (at the time Novomoskovsk) had a population of 71,860 people. In terms of ethnicity, Ukrainians constitute a large majority, accounting for over 80% of the population. The second-largest group are people with an ethnic Russian background (13%), while the remaining population consists of Belarusians, Germans, Armenians, people of Turkic origin, Jews and Romani people. The exact ethnic composition was as follows: ==Notable people==

• Mykola Hlushchenko (1901-1977), Ukrainian painter and Soviet spy • Stepan Koval (born 1965), film director and animator • Viktor Skrypnyk (born 1969), football manager ==Gallery==

File:Братські й настоятельські келії.jpg|Samar monastery File:Novomoskovsk Cathedral.JPG|Former synagogue building in Samar File:Новомосковськ Миколаївський собор.jpg|St. Nicholas Cathedral File:Навчальний корпус Новомосковського кооперативного технікуму, Новомосковськ, вул. Радянська, 29.jpg|Novomoskovsk Technical Institute File:Житловий будинок,Новомосковськ, вул. Радянська, 31.jpg|Stalinist architecture File:Сучкова 15.jpg|A residential building in downtown Samar ==See also==