Qualla: Boryspil

Boryspil: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aschroet, CC0. Most travelers know Boryspil for a single reason: it is the last place their feet touch the ground before they reach Kyiv, or the first after they leave. Ukraine's largest and busiest airport carries the city's name, and millions pass through it without ever seeing the town beyond the runways. But Boryspil is far older than any airport. Its name may reach back a thousand years to a prince named Boris, murdered in the dynastic bloodshed that followed the death of Vladimir the Great, or it may echo the Greek name for the great river that shaped this land. Either way, the field where it stands has been fought over, ruled, starved, and occupied for a millennium - and it produced the man who gave Ukraine the words of its national anthem.

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Image: Aschroet | CC0

Boryspil: Borys's Field

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was Stanislavovich at uk.wikipedia, Public domain. The story of the name begins in blood. When Vladimir the Great died, his sons turned on one another in the internecine wars of 1015 to 1019, and two of them - Boris and Gleb - were murdered. Official sources hold that the city takes its name from Prince Boris. The historian Petro...

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Image: Original uploader was Stanislavovich at uk.wikipedia | Public domain

Boryspil: Crowns, Cossacks, and a Coat of Arms

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Skoropadsky, CC BY-SA 4.0. After the Mongol invasion, this land became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and later, following the Union of Lublin, passed to the Polish Crown. In 1596 King Sigismund III Vasa turned Boryspil into a royal estate, and that same year it received Magdeburg rights - the self-...

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Image: Skoropadsky | CC BY-SA 4.0

Boryspil: Hunger, Occupation, and a Poet

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Олекса-Київ, CC BY 3.0. The 20th century pressed hard on Boryspil. During the Holodomor, the Soviet-organized famine, official figures alone record 5,739 deaths in a single year between 1933 and 1934 - among them 266 infants under a year old, a number that hints at grief far beyond any statistic. During...

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Image: Олекса-Київ | CC BY 3.0