We were privileged to be invited by Denys Nazarenko of Kyiv City Council to include his beloved city in The DNA of Cities following the devastating full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.

We might think of Kyiv as an ancient city in a turbulent present in which its citizens have been actively fighting for more than 1,000 days to defend Ukrainian independence, freedom and sovereignty from Russia. In this episode, we explore the birth of Kyiv as a city and its historical role as the main centre in the Kyivan Rus, an extremely large federation that gave rise to what we now recognise as the Eastern Slavic States of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. 

We are incredibly grateful to Denys Nazarenko, Dr Victoria Itskovych, Professor Serhy Yekelchyk and Yulia Bevzenko for joining us in this episode. We learnt so much from each of them.

To learn more about The DNA of Cities and to read each of our interviews in full, head to www.thednaofcities.com.

To find out more about the history of Kyiv, check out these resources:

Yulia Bevzenko - Shukai

Serhii Plokhy - The Gates of Europe

Serhy Yekelchyk - Ukraine: What Everyone Needs to Know

Serhy Yekelchyk - Understanding Ukraine for Legion Magazine

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Bass Vibes - Rollin at 5 by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100462

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Sound design by Dainius Kacinskas.