Pogoreloye

Pogoreloye belongs to the wooded country of the upper Ugra, east of the Smolensk lands. A district called Pogorelaya appears among the Dorogobuzh territories in late medieval records, when Moscow and Lithuania contested the region. The Ugra flows eastward to the Oka and marked an important frontier between their spheres. Forests and river valleys shaped the countryside through which princes, messengers and armies moved between the two states.