List of cities in Donetsk Oblast

Cities in Donetsk Oblast
Location	Donetsk Oblast
Number	52 (as of 2022)
Populations	4,226–901,645

There are 52 populated places in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, that have been officially granted city status (Ukrainian: місто, romanized: misto) by the Verkhovna Rada, the country's parliament.^[1] Settlements with more than 10,000 people are eligible for city status although the status is typically also granted to settlements of historical or regional importance.^[2][3][4] As of 5 December 2001, the date of the first and only official census in the country since independence,^[a] the most populous city in the oblast was the regional capital Donetsk with a population of 1,016,194 people, while the least populous city was Sviatohirsk, with a population of 5,136 people.^[5][6] The most recent settlement to receive city status is Mykolaivka, which was granted the status by the Verkhovna Rada on 18 November 2003.^[7]

From independence in 1991 until 2020, 28 cities in the oblast were designated as cities of regional significance (municipalities), which had self-government under city councils, while the oblast's remaining 24 cities were located in 18 raions (districts) as cities of district significance, which are subordinated to the governments of the raions.^[8][9][6] On 18 July 2020, an administrative reform abolished and merged the oblast's raions and cities of regional significance into eight new, expanded raions.^[b][2][12] The eight raions that make up the oblast are Bakhmut, Donetsk, Horlivka, Kalmiuske, Kramatorsk, Mariupol, Pokrovsk, and Volnovakha raion.^[13][14] After the enactment of decommunization laws, ten cities within the oblast were renamed in 2016 for their former names' connection to people, places, events, and organizations associated with the Soviet Union.^[15][16] The renamed cities are Bakhmut, Bunhe, Chystiakove, Kalmiuske, Khrestivka, Lyman, Myrnohrad, Pokrovsk, Toretsk, and Zalizne, which were previously named Artemivsk, Yunokomunarivsk, Torez, Komsomolske, Kirovske, Krasnyi Lyman, Dymytrov, Krasnoarmiisk, Dzerzhynsk, and Artemove, respectively.^[17]

Following the Donbas war, pro-Russian separatist forces occupied all cities located in the Donetsk, Horlivka, and Kalmiuske raions by 2015.^[10] Additional cities were occupied by Russian troops after 24 February 2022, during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.^[18][19] As of 14 April 2024, 28 cities are occupied by Russian forces while an additional two cities (Lyman and Sviatohirsk) have been recovered by Ukraine.^[20][21][22] For their contributions to the country's defense during the invasion, two cities in the oblast (Mariupol and Volnovakha) were awarded with the honorary title Hero City of Ukraine in 2022.^[23][24] Due to the occupation of the three reformed raions, including the cities of Bunhe, Chystiakove, Kalmiuske, and Khrestivka, by separatist forces at the time of the 2016 renaming and 2020 administrative reform, the three raions^[b] and four cities' new names have only de jure status.^[10][25][26]

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