Dobropillia

Located in the northwestern part of the region, on the Byk River (a tributary of the Samara River (a tributary of the Dnieper River), part of the Dnieper River basin). Dobropillya Station is part of the Yasinovataya branch of the Donetsk Railway.

The city of Dobropillia was founded in the 1840s as the Praskoveyevka farmstead (44 residents in 1859) by the landowner Albansky. Coal deposits were discovered in the area in the 1870s and 1880s, and the first mine was founded by the landowner Yenin at the end of the century. In 1913, the Erastovsky mine was established, and on the right bank of the Byka River, the Svyatogorsky mine. Since 1914, a railway line has been in operation, designed to transport coal mined from the mines of the Dobropolsky district.

By 1920, Paraskoveyevka had 47 farms and 270 residents, with another 150 residents in the settlement of the Svyatogorsky mine. A small hospital and primary school were also in operation. In 1931, the powerful Maxim Gorky "Giant" mine (after the war, No. 1-2 "Dobropolyeugol") was commissioned, around which two well-appointed settlements appeared: Tekhnokolonna and Vremennaya Koloniya.

In 1935, all the settlements were merged into the village of Dobropolye. Pre-war coal production by the Dobropolyeugol trust was 291.5 thousand tons (1939), post-war - 401 thousand tons (1950). A local newspaper is published here since February 1935.^[2]

During the Second World War, the settlement was occupied by Axis troops.^[3] As of early 1951, there was a high school, two libraries and several coal mining enterprises operating here. The largest of which was the Dobropolskaya Central Coal Processing Plant, which was commissioned in 1950 and processed 1.2 million tons of coal.^[4] The settlement of Zhdanov grew around it.

In 1953, after merging with several settlements, it became a city.^[5] Under regional jurisdiction, the population grew to 18,000 due to resettlement from the Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions. In 1959, large coking coal deposits were discovered in the surrounding area. New mines and settlements were built there.

Since 1963, Dobropillya has been a city under regional jurisdiction. In 1963, the city's population was 25,000. On August 23, 1968, trolleybus service opened in Dobropillya, making Dobropillya one of the smallest cities in the world with trolleybus service.^[6][7] In 1970, the population of the city was 30 thousand people, the basis of the economy was coal mining.^[8][9]

Dobropillia was one of the first towns shelled by Russia using "Grad" MLRS on 13 June 2014, with one civilian killed.^[10]

On the night of 7 March 2025, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian army attacked a residential district between Shevchenko and Luhanska streets with ballistic missiles. A double-tap attack with cluster munitions happened shortly after the first one with 11 killed and 30 wounded initially confirmed.^[11]

In July 2025, a Russian air strike on a shopping center in the town killed at least two people and injured several others.^[12][13] An FAB-type 500-kg bomb was used in the attack, affecting 54 retail outlets, 304 apartments, and eight vehicles.^[14] Dobropillia was about 15 kilometers from the front line at the time.^[14]

By 11 August, Russian forces in the Pokrovsk sector had launched an offensive towards the Dobropillia–Kramatorsk highway.^[15]

As of the Ukrainian Census of 2001:^[16]

Ethnicity

• Ukrainians: 71.3%
• Russians: 25.9%
• Belarusians: 1.1%
• Tatars: 0.4%
• Greeks: 0.2%

Language

• Russian: 61.0%
• Ukrainian: 38.5%
• Belarusian: 0.1%

• Art Bezrukavenko (born 1996), content creator and social media personality^[17]