Pripyat (river)
The Pripyat or Prypiat is a river in Eastern Europe. The river, which is approximately long, flows east through Ukraine, Belarus, and into Ukraine again, before draining into the Dnieper at Kyiv Reservoir.
Name etymology
notes in his etymological dictionary that the historical name of the river mentioned in the earliest East Slavic document, the Primary Chronicle, is Pripet', and cites the opinion of other linguists that the name meant "tributary", comparing with Greek and Latin roots. He also rejects some opinions which were improperly based on the stem -пять -pjat, rather than original -петь.The name may also derive from the local word pripech used for a river with sandy banks.
Geography
The Pripyat begins in the Volhynian Upland, between the villages of and in Volyn Oblast, Ukraine. 204 km downstream, it crosses the border of Belarus, where it travels 500 km through Polesia, Europe's largest wilderness, within which lie the vast sandy wetlands known as the Pripet Marshes, a dense network of swamps, bogs, rivers and rivulets within a forested basin. For the last 50 kilometers the Pripyat flows again in Ukraine and flows several kilometers south of Chernobyl into the Kyiv Reservoir.The length of the river is 775 km, and the area of the watershed is 114,300 km2. The width of the floodplain varies from 4 to 15 km over the course of the river, with occasional flooding reaching 30 km. of the whole river length lies within Belarus, with the rest in Ukraine.
The Pripyat is navigable up to Pinsk, where the Dnieper-Bug Canal leads to the Bug River.
The Pripyat passes through the exclusion zone established around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The nearby city of Pripyat, Ukraine, which was named after the river, was completely evacuated after the Chernobyl disaster.
The Pripyat is known for its numerous oxbow lakes and channels.