Irpin River

The Irpin’ or Irpen’ (Ukrainian: Ірпі́нь; Russian: Ирпе́нь) is a river in Ukraine, a right tributary of the Dnieper.

It is 162 km in length and flows through the city of Irpin'. The location where Irpin' enters the Dnieper river falls into the Kiev Reservoir which the Dnieper forms because of the Kiev Hydro-Electric Power Plant dam. Thus, the Dnieper water level at this location is lifted artificially by about 6.5–7 meters above the natural level. Therefore, the water of Irpin' is pumped into the Kiev Reservoir by powerful electrical pumps, making Irpin' the river that literally flows upwards.

The lands around Irpen' were the heartland of Kievan Rus and the chronicles mention the river in connection with several important historic events, such as the Battle on the Irpen' River of 1321 in which the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas (Gedemin) gained control over the lands of what is now central Ukraine.

Dnieper River
Tributaries
  • Drut
  • Berezina
  • Sozh
  • Pripyat
  • Horyn
  • Sluch
  • Ubort
  • Teteriv
  • Irpin
  • Desna
  • Stuhna
  • Trubizh
  • Ros
  • Tiasmyn
  • Supiy
  • Sula
  • Pslo
  • Vorskla
  • Samara
  • Konka
  • Bilozerka
  • Bazavluk
  • Inhulets
  • Zolotonoshka River
Reservoirs
  • Dnieper
  • Dniprodzerzhynsk
  • Kakhovka
  • Kaniv
  • Kiev
  • Kremenchuk
Hydroelectric
stations
  • Dnieper
  • Dniprodzerzhynsk
  • Kakhovka
  • Kaniv
  • Kiev
  • Kremenchuk
Italics indicate left tributaries

Coordinates: 50°27′41.18″N 30°31′47.6″E / 50.4614389°N 30.529889°E / 50.4614389; 30.529889

Famous quotes containing the word river:

    “Every incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)