This is Khotyn Castle (or fortress) near the town of Khotyn, Ukraine. There has been a fort or castle here since the 10th century and, like the surrounding region, it has been tossed around between empires and conquerors every few decades. What eventually became Ukraine is a large land area that has been variously part of the Wallachian Kingdom (present day Romania), the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), Kievan Rus (based in present-day Kyiv), the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Kingdom of Poland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and the USSR finally gaining independence in 1991 upon the dissolution of the USSR. Despite what Vladimir the Conqueror claims, the present-day country of Ukraine, as a whole, has never really had a consistent historical connection with any current day nation. Western Ukraine has been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (later the Kingdom of Poland) most consistently. Eastern Ukraine has been influenced mostly by the Russian Empire. The City of Kyiv sort of sits in the middle.
Khotyn Castle sat at the crossroads of several trade routes between the Black Sea, Russia, Poland (in its various permutations), the Balkan states and Scandinavia. For this reason, Khotyn Castle has been fought over multiple times. In a notorious siege in 1673, the future King of Poland, Jan Sobieski, led an army against the Ottomans to capture Khotyn and put it firmly in the hands of the Poles. General Sobieski’s description of the battle at the castle will sound familiar to anyone who is following the news from present day Ukraine:
More than 60 guns were thundering non-stop, the sky was in flames and smothered in smoke, the earth was quaking, the walls were groaning, the rocks were splitting into pieces. That which my eyes captured throughout the day was indescribable. It is impossible to convey the persistence and courage, or rather despair, with which both parties were fighting”
Like Ukraine and its capital Kyiv for the moment, Khotyn Castle withstood the siege (and others that came afterwards). Today, the castle is a museum (one of the “7 wondrous castles of Ukraine”) and more information can be found here.
Slava Ukraine!!
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