Kryvyi Rih (Ukrainian: [krwj ri], lit.'Curved Cape' or 'Crooked Horn', Krivoy Rog) is the largest city in central Ukraine and 7th most populous city in the country; 2nd biggest city in the country by area. It lies within a large urban area with approximately one million inhabitants and serves as the administrative center of Kryvyi Rih Raion. The citys population at the beginning of 2022 is estimated at 646,748. It hosts the administration of Kryvyi Rih urban community.Located at the confluence of the Saksahan and Inhulets rivers, Kryvyi Rih was founded as a staging post in 1775 and developed as a military settlement. Urban growth followed Belgian, French and British investment in the exploitation of area's rich iron-ore deposits (generally called Kryvbas) in the 1880s. Kryvyi Rih gained city status after the October Revolution in 1919.

Stalin-era industrialisation saw the development in the city from 1934 of Kryvorizhstal, the largest integrated metallurgical works in the Soviet Union. After a brutal German occupation in World War Two, Kryvyi Rih experienced industrial and urban growth through to the 1970s. The economic dislocation associated with the break-up of the Soviet Union contributed to high unemployment and a large-scale exodus from the city in the 1990s. The privatization of Kryvorizhstal in 2005 was followed by increased foreign and private investment which helped finance urban regeneration. Beginning in 2017, there were major labor protests and strikes.

In their February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, forces of the Russian Federation approached the citys outskirts from Russian-occupied Crimea. In March, their advance stalled some 50 km to the south. Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.



The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The army was established in January 1918. The Bolsheviks raised an army to oppose the military confederations (especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army) of their adversaries during the Russian Civil War. Starting in February 1946, the Red Army, along with the Soviet Navy, embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces; taking the official name of "Soviet Army", until its dissolution in 1991.

The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II, and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan. During operations on the Eastern Front, it accounted for 75–80% of casualties the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered during the war and ultimately captured the Nazi German capital, Berlin.