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DNIEPR

Ukrainian: Dnipro, Russian: Dnepr, Belorussian: Dnepro.

Length (km): 2 285
Drainage Area (km2): 503 000
Discharge (m3/s): 1 605
Countries: 3
Population: 33 000 000
Sea at Mouth: Black
Ramsar Sites: 5

Rising in the southwestern part of the Russian Federation, at an altitude of about 220 metres on the southern slope of the Valdai Hills, west of Moscow, not far from the sources of the Volga, the Dnieper River flows generally south through Belarus, then southeast through Ukraine, ending in the Black Sea. The Dnieper is the third longest river in Europe, and the second longest river flowing into the Black Sea. Its watershed is 58% in Ukraine, 24% in Belarus and only 18% in Russia.

Some 33 million people inhabit the Dnieper Basin, of which 22 million live in Ukraine. The River flows through Smolensk (350 000) in Russia, Mogilev (350 000) in Belarus, through the Ukrainian capital Kiev with its 3 million inhabitants, Cherkasy (290 000), Kremenchuk (237 000) and Dnepropetrovsk (1.2 million).

The Dnieper Basin contains approximately 300 hydroelectric plants and several major dams. The River is navigable for about 1 677 km during the 10 months of the year when it is not frozen. It represents an important shipping artery for Eastern Europe; the navigable tributaries of the Dnieper are the Berezina, the Pripet, the Sozh and the Desna.

The Dnieper has undergone considerable changes due to construction of a series of reservoirs. Hydropower stations, nuclear power stations located in the basin, and heavy industries have caused ecological, social and economic damage at a regional scale. The environmental and human health problems both in the Dnieper Basin and the Black Sea region as a whole are worsened by large-scale development of timberland, and draining of waterlogged lands for agriculture, and the intensive growth of cities where sewage purification is insufficient. After the Chernobyl catastrophe, a large amount of radioactive cesium was deposited in reservoir sediment (especially in the Kiev Sea) and risks potentially increasing the radioactivity both in this region and along the entire length of the River to the Black Sea.

Many swamps and wetlands have formed in the northwestern part of the river basin (Pripet swamps) and drain their water into the Pripet, the main tributary of the Dnieper. Humic substances combined with manganese and iron give the water a red-brown colour, especially during Spring.

UNDP-GEF Dnipro Basin Environment Programme: www.dnipro-gef.net