Kyiv and Chernobyl

When it was part of the Soviet Union, the city now known as Kyiv, was assigned the Russian name "Kiev". It switched back to its Ukrainian name after the breakup of the Soviet Union (search KyivnotKiev). Kyiv has had a very tumultuous history over much of the the past millennia. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyiv. 

An excerpt from this excellent Wikipedia article:

In 1934, Kyiv became the capital of Soviet Ukraine. The city boomed again during the years of Soviet industrialization as its population grew rapidly and many industrial giants were established, some of which exist today.

Ruins of Kyiv during World War II

In World War II, the city again suffered significant damage, and Nazi Germany occupied it from 19 September 1941 to 6 November 1943. Axis forces killed or captured more than 600,000 Soviet soldiers in the great encirclement Battle of Kyiv in 1941. Most of those captured never returned alive.^[99] Shortly after the Wehrmacht occupied the city, a team of NKVD officers who had remained hidden dynamited most of the buildings on the Khreshchatyk, the main street of the city, where German military and civil authorities had occupied most of the buildings; the buildings burned for days and 25,000 people were left homeless.

Allegedly in response to the actions of the NKVD, the Germans rounded up all the local Jews they could find, nearly 34,000,^[100] and massacred them at Babi Yar in Kyiv on 29 and 30 September 1941.^[101] In the months that followed, thousands more were taken to Babi Yar where they were shot. It is estimated that the Germans murdered more than 100,000 people of various ethnic groups, mostly civilians, at Babi Yar during World War II.^[102]

The Ukrainian national flag was raised outside Kyiv's City Hall for the first time on 24 July 1990.

Kyiv recovered economically in the post-war years, becoming once again the third-most important city of the Soviet Union. The catastrophic accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 occurred only 100 km (62 mi) north of the city. However, the prevailing south wind blew most of the radioactive debris away from Kyiv.

In the course of the collapse of the Soviet Union the Ukrainian parliament proclaimed the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in the city on 24 August 1991. In 2004–2005, the city played host to the largest post-Soviet public demonstrations up to that time, in support of the Orange Revolution. From November 2013 until February 2014, central Kyiv became the primary location of Euromaidan.