Kremenchuk an important industrial city in central Ukraine, stands on the banks of the Dnieper River. Kremenchuk is the administrative center of the Kremenchuk Raion (district) in the Poltava Oblast (province). In 2015, the city had a population of 225, 216 people.

Although smaller than most oblast centers, Kremenchuk has significance as a large industrial center in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe as the base of the KrAZ truck plant, Ukrtatnafta, and of the Kryukov Railway Car Building Works. The latter concern, one of the oldest railway repair and rail-car building factories in Eastern Europe, dates back to 1869.

Kremenchuk was supposedly founded in 1571. The name Kremenchuk is explained as deriving from the word “kremen” – chert (a mineral) because the city is located on a giant chert plate. An alternative explanation says that “Kremenchuk” is the Turkish for “small fortress”.

From its situation at the southern terminus of the navigable course of the Dnieper, and equally advantageous positioning on the crossway from Muscovy to the Black Sea, it acquired a great commercial importance early on, and by 1655, it was a wealthy Cossack town. In 1625, at Lake Kurukove in Kremenchuk, the Treaty of Kurukove was signed between the Cossacks and the Poles.

During World War II (1939-1945), Kremenchuk suffered heavily under Nazi occupation. It was occupied from September 15, 1941 to September 29, 1943. More than 90% of the city’s buildings were leveled over the course of the war. 29 September, the day when the city was liberated from the Nazis in 1943, is celebrated in Kremenchuk as the City Day. Despite a remarkable post-war recovery and a healthier economy, Kremenchuk lacks much of the architectural charm and distinctly Ukrainian (rather than Russian) character of its sister city, the oblast capital of Poltava.

During the Cold War, Kremenchuk became the headquarters for the 43rd Rocket Division of the 43rd Army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces.The division was equipped with R-12 Dvina intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Kremenchuk’s Ukrtatnafta oil refinery is the largest in Ukraine and the only one operating since the beginning of the conflict with Russia that left refineries in the Donbass inactive.

Read more about the city on Wikipedia