The Great Meadow or Grand Meadow (Ukrainian: Великий луг, romanized: Velykyi luh) is a lowland area on the Dnieper and the Konka to the south of Khortytsia Island that historically consisted of a system of rivers, reed beds, swamps, flooded forests, and meadows. The Great Meadow ceased to exist in 1950s, when it was flooded by the Kakhovka Reservoir, and re-emerged in 2023 upon the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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Great Meadow, Ukraine in the context of Zaporozhian Sich
The Zaporozhian Sich or Zaporizhian Sich, also known as the Free lands of the Zaporozhian Host the Lower, was a semi-autonomous polity and proto-state of Zaporozhian Cossacks that existed between the 16th to 18th centuries. For the latter part of that period, it was an autonomous stratocratic state within the Cossack Hetmanate. The lands of Zaporozhian Sich were centred around the Great Meadow region of Ukraine, spanning the lower Dnieper river. In different periods the area came under the sovereignty of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Ottoman Empire, the Tsardom of Russia, and the Russian Empire.
The establishment of Zaporozhian Sich was an important factor in defense of Ukraine and Russia from Crimean-Nogai raids. In c. 1650, its total population consisted of 100,000. In 1657–1687, Zaporizhian Sich was practically independent, possessing its own administration and armed forces consisting of 12,000–20,000 Cossacks. It was reliant on population growth, mainly consisting of Ukrainian refugees from devastated lands.
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