Current Time in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine

Khmelnytskyi is a regional capital in western Ukraine, standing on the upper reaches of the Southern Bug River in the historic land of Podillia. The surrounding country is a gently rolling plateau of exceptionally fertile black earth, divided by river valleys and patches of oak and hornbeam woodland. The city itself is green and spacious, with parks along the river, wide avenues and a compact centre, and it enjoys a moderate continental climate with warm summers and snowy winters.

About two hundred and seventy thousand people live here. The city is best known throughout Ukraine and beyond for its enormous wholesale clothing and textile market, one of the largest in Eastern Europe, which draws traders from across the country and from neighbouring states. Engineering, transformer and electrical equipment manufacture, food processing, woodworking, agriculture and, increasingly, information technology and services form the rest of the economy, and the region is one of the leading grain and sugar beet producers in Ukraine.

A settlement called Ploskyriv is first recorded in the sixteenth century, when it was a small fortified town on the frontier between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the steppe. It was repeatedly raided by Tatars and fought over during the Cossack wars of the seventeenth century. Under Russian rule from the end of the eighteenth century the town, then called Proskuriv, developed as a trading and garrison centre with a large Jewish population, and the arrival of the railway in the 1870s brought industry and rapid growth. It suffered terribly in the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century. In 1954 the city was renamed in honour of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, the Cossack hetman whose seventeenth-century uprising against Polish rule is a foundational event in Ukrainian history.

The city centre has an attractive main avenue lined with chestnut trees, cafés and nineteenth-century buildings, a cathedral, an old water tower converted into a viewpoint and museum, and a regional art museum with a good collection of Ukrainian painting. The park along the Southern Bug, with its beaches, boat hire and long riverside walk, is the favourite place for a summer evening. What draws most visitors, however, is the surrounding region. Kamianets-Podilskyi, with its spectacular castle standing on a rock island in a river canyon, is one of the great sights of Ukraine, and nearby Medzhybizh has both a fine fortress and the tomb of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, which remains an important place of pilgrimage.

Cultural life includes a regional theatre, a philharmonic, folk ensembles preserving the embroidery, songs and dances of Podillia, and a calendar of festivals. Local cuisine features borscht, varenyky, banosh, cured meats and honey from the region's many apiaries.

Trains and buses connect the city with Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa, and highways cross the region. Khmelnytskyi National University and several academies and colleges give the city a substantial student population.

Khmelnytskyi is important as the commercial heart of Podillia and as a convenient base for exploring the historic castles of western Ukraine.