Pochep

Pochep stands on the Sudost River in the wooded country of Severia. It was recorded by the fifteenth century, in a frontier region contested by the rulers of Lithuania and Moscow. After the Truce of Deulino in 1618, the town came under Polish-Lithuanian authority.

Following the mid-seventeenth-century upheavals, Pochep became the centre of a Cossack sotnia, an administrative and military district of the Starodub regiment. Its defences were rebuilt on Peter I's orders in 1708–1709, during the Great Northern War. In 1750 the town was granted to Kyrylo Rozumovsky, the last hetman of the Cossack Hetmanate. These changes placed Pochep within successive systems of frontier rule and Cossack administration.