Liubech

Liubech stands near the Dnieper north of Kyiv, an old town of the Chernihiv lands. First mentioned in the chronicle under 882, it was the meeting place of princes in 1097. At the Council of Liubech they sought to end disputes by recognising each prince's hereditary lands. St Anthony of the Caves, associated with the founding of Kyiv's great cave monastery, was born here.

In the fourteenth century Liubech became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which held the neighbouring lands along the Dnieper. It later passed to the Polish Crown and received town rights in 1632. During the Cossack wars it belonged to the contested frontier of the Dnieper, before the truce of Andrusovo in 1667 placed the Chernihiv lands under Russian sovereignty.