Korsun

Korsun stands on the Ros River, on the old southern approaches to Kyiv. A fortress established under Yaroslav the Wise formed part of the defence against nomads from the steppe; it was destroyed in the Mongol invasion. The town was refortified under Polish rule and received Magdeburg rights in 1585, becoming the centre of a starost's district.

Cossack rebels attacked Korsun in 1630, and Polish forces destroyed it during the rising of 1637. In 1648 Bohdan Khmelnytsky and his Crimean Tatar allies defeated a Polish army near the town in the Battle of Korsun, an important early victory for the uprising against the Commonwealth. A century later Maksym Zalizniak's forces destroyed the Polish garrison during the Koliivshchyna of 1768. Korsun passed to Russia in the second partition of Poland in 1793.