Voronezh (river)
Going upstream, it leaves the Don south of Voronezh and goes north parallel and east of the Don for about 150 kilometres (93 mi). West of Michurinsk it swings east and splits into the Lesnoy and Polny Voronezh Rivers ("Forest and Field Voronezh"). These go north about 75 kilometres (47 mi) to the border of Ryazan Oblast. To the north are tributaries of the Oka. To the east are the basins of the south-flowing Bityug which joins the Don and the north-flowing Tsna which reaches the Oka via the Moksha.
The river is named for an earlier town destroyed by the Mongol invasion, whose name in turn was borrowed from a place name in the Principality of Chernigov, derived from the personal name Voroneg. From the 1650s the Belgorod Line of forts ran along the Voronezh. In 1706 Peter the Great built boats along the Voronezh and sailed them down the Don to attack the Turkish fortress of Azov.
References
- ^ «Река Воронеж», Russian State Water Registry
- ^ E.M. Pospelov, Geograficheskie nazvaniya mira (Moscow, 1998), p. 104.