According to the notes of a Polish cartographer Tomasz Makovsky, that he made in 1590's, Ukrainian lands beyond Kaniv covered by wild steppes was marked as "campi deserti citra Boristenem" (desert plains on this side of Borysthenes). At different times, these lands were inhabited by different peoples: Trypillians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Goths, Greeks, Khazars, Tatars, Ruthenians etc. But all of them lived within the territorial boundaries of one social union, changing only by the form of power and political order. The traditions and mentality of these peoples have greatly influenced on today's inhabitants of these territories. Actually, from these ancient cultural markers, the modern Ukrainian also consists.
At the end of the 17th century, after the Russian tsar Alexei Mikhailovich deceived Ukrainian Hetman Bogdan Khmelnitsky - the military alliance became a merger of Ukraine with the Moscow principality, these lands were of no interest to anyone until the end of the 19th century. When big businessmen from England, France, Switzerland discovered the economic potential of this land and began to rise coil and metal industry of the region. The local population for many centuries cultivated land and local contemporaries of industrialization of the region had more benefits than those offered to workers in newly established factories. In the beginning of the XX century, south-eastern Ukraine has become familiar to the phenomenon of the "wild west" in the US history. People from all Russian Empire came there looking for work in the hope of a better life. New towns and villages grew around the factories, which were mostly populated by workers from Russia. After the artificial genocide of the rural population, better known as the "Holodomor" (Famine 1932-1933), the population of Ukrainians has significantly decreased (10 millions of confirmed victims). All people that survived were assimilated and conserved in the Soviet vacuum. In such of the condition, they coexisted peacefully until the spring 2014 politicians began a dispute over territories and people have to determine who they are. The new geopolitical redistribution of the world order began at desert plains on this side of Borysthenes.
All pictures were made on liberated territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. The Crimean peninsula is still occupied by the Russian Federation, after the annexation in March of 2014.
