uk, Західний Буг
be, Захо́дні Буг
, name_etymology = , image = Wyszkow_Bug.jpg , image_size = 250 , image_caption = Bug River in the vicinity of

Wyszków Wyszków (; yi, ווישקאָוו ''Vishkov'') is a town in eastern Poland with 26,500 inhabitants (2018). It is the capital of Wyszków County in Masovian Voivodeship. History The village of Wyszków was first documented in 1203. It was gr ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, , is a country in Central Europe. Poland is divided into Voivodeships of Poland, sixteen voivodeships and is the fifth most populous member state of the European Union (EU), with over 38 mill ...

, map = Vistula river map.png , map_size = 250px , map_caption = Bug River through Ukraine, Belarus and Poland , pushpin_map = , pushpin_map_size = 250px , pushpin_map_caption= , subdivision_type1 = Country , subdivision_name1 =

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

Ukraine Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian invas ...

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Voblast
Oblast , subdivision_name3 = Podlaskie, Mazovian,

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of ...

,
Brest,

Lviv Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in western Ukraine, and the seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main cultural centres of Ukra ...

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Serock Serock is a town at the north bank of the Zegrze lake in the Legionowo County, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland, around north of Warsaw. It has 4,109 inhabitants (2013). History The stronghold was founded in the 10th century, shortly after the ...

, discharge1_min = , discharge1_avg = , discharge1_max = , discharge2_location=

mouth In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on t ...

, discharge2_min = , discharge2_avg = , discharge2_max = , source1 = , source1_location = near Verkhobuzh,

Lviv Oblast Lviv Oblast ( uk, Льві́вська о́бласть, translit=Lvivska oblast, ), also referred to as Lvivshchyna ( uk, Льві́вщина, ), ). The name of each oblast is a relational adjective—in English translating to a noun adjunct w ...

, source1_coordinates= , source1_elevation = , mouth = Narew , mouth_location = near

, mouth_coordinates = , mouth_elevation = , progression = , basin_size = , tributaries_left = , tributaries_right = , extra = __NOTOC__ The Bug ( pl, Bug ) or Western Bug ( uk, Західний Буг, ''Zakhidnyy Buh, '' be, Захо́дні Буг, ''Zakhodni Buh''; russian: Западный Буг, ''Zapadnyy Bug'') is a major river mostly located in

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, wh ...

that flows through

, and

with a total length of .Statistical Yearbook of the Republic of Poland 2017
Statistics Poland, p. 85-86 A tributary of the Narew, the Bug forms part of the

border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political bo ...

between

and Poland for and part of the

between

and

for , and is the fourth longest Polish river.

History

According to Zbigniew Gołąb, the Slavic hydronym ''Bug'' as ''*bugъ''/''*buga'' derives from Indo-European verbal root ''*bheug-'' (having cognates in old Germanic word ''*bheugh-'' etc. with meaning of "bend, turn, moves away"), with hypothetical original meaning of "pertaining to a (river) bend", and derivatives in Russian ''búga'' ("low banks of a river, overgrown with bushes"), Polish ''bugaj'' ("bushes or woods in a river valley or on a steep river bank"), Latvian ''bauga'' ("marshy place by a river"). Traditionally, e.g. by the drafters of the Curzon Line, the Bug River has been considered to be the ethnographical border between the East and West as well as the border between Polish Orthodox and

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

peoples. The Bug was part of the frontier between the slices of Poland occupied by Austria and Russia after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795, the southern half of the eastern border of the Duchy of Warsaw (1809-1815),

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It ...

(1815-1867), of the Vistula Land (1867-1913), and of the Regency Kingdom of Poland (1917-1918). The Bug also formed part of the dividing line between German

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previou ...

and Soviet

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...

zones specified in a secret clause of the German–Soviet Frontier Treaty of 28 September 1939 following the September 1939

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Geographic characteristics

The Bug is a left tributary of the Narew. It flows from the

in the west of Ukraine northwards into the Volyn Oblast, before passing along the Ukraine-Polish and Polish-Belarusian border and into Poland, where it follows part of the border between the Masovian and Podlaskie

Voivodeship A voivodeship is the area administered by a voivode (Governor) in several countries of central and eastern Europe. Voivodeships have existed since medieval times and the area of extent of voivodeship resembles that of a duchy in western medieval ...

s. It joins the Narew at

, a few kilometers upstream of the artificial Zegrze Lake. This part of the Narew between the confluence and the Vistula is sometimes referred to as Bugo-Narew but on December 27, 1962, the Prime Minister of Poland's act abolished the name "Bugo-Narew", soon after Zegrze Lake was completed. "Monitor Polski" 1963, nr 3, poz. 6 On the Bug, a few kilometers from the Vysokaye in Kamenets District of the Brest Region, is the westernmost point of

. It is also connected with the

Dnieper } The Dnieper () or Dnipro (); , ; . is one of the major transboundary rivers of Europe, rising in the Valdai Hills near Smolensk, Russia, before flowing through Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. It is the longest river of Ukraine ...

via the Mukhavets, a right-bank tributary, by the Dnieper-Bug Canal.

Basin

The total basin area of Bug is of which half, or, 50%, is in Poland. Somewhat more than a quarter, or 29%, is in Belarus, and a bit under a quarter, or 22% lies in Ukraine. The climate of the Bug basin is

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout t ...

. The basin experiences annual high-water levels during spring flooding due to thawing snow, after which a low flow period starts and lasts until October or mid-November. Occasional summer floods often occur in the headlands, where mountains influence favorable

flash-flood A flash flood is a rapid flooding of low-lying areas: washes, rivers, dry lakes and depressions. It may be caused by heavy rain associated with a severe thunderstorm, hurricane, or tropical storm, or by meltwater from ice or snow flowing ov ...

conditions. In Autumn the water level increases are inconsiderable; in some years they do not happen at all. During the winter the river can have temporary ice-outs that sometimes provoke ice jams, causing an increase of the level up to . The resultant water levels are changeable due to the instability of ice cover.

Flooding

Significant floods during the last 60 years in Belarus were registered in 1958, 1962, 1967, 1971 and 1974. The largest spring flood was observed in 1979, when the maximum water discharge was 19.1 cubic metres per second on 24 March 1979, at the village of Chersk; 166 cubic metres per second near the village of Tyukhinichi ( Lyasnaya river) on 31 March 1979; and 269 cubic metres per second near Brest on 1 April 1979. A similar spring flood occurred in 1999, when the spring run-off in March–May exceeded the average annual value by almost half again (48%). The last time the Bug flooded in Poland and Ukraine was in 2010 and the last time it flooded in Belarus was in 1999.

Tributaries

Photo gallery

Image:Bug_wlodawa01b-04.jpg , Bug River in the vicinity of Włodawa Image:Bug Nur.jpg , Bug River in the vicinity of Nur Image:Rzeka Bug w Drohiczynie.jpg , Bug River in the vicinity of Drohiczyn Image:Rzeka Bug.jpg , Bug River landscape near Nadbużański Image:Bug..JPG , Bug River in the vicinity of Małkinia Górna Image:Bug Serpelice.JPG , Bug River in the vicinity of Serpelice

References

External links

*
Bug
in the Geographical Dictionary of the Kingdom of Poland (1880) {{Authority control Belarus–Poland border Belarus–Ukraine border Poland–Ukraine border Border rivers Borders of Belarus Borders of Poland Borders of Ukraine International rivers of Europe Natura 2000 in Poland Rivers of Belarus Rivers of Brest Region Rivers of Lublin Voivodeship Rivers of Lviv Oblast Rivers of Masovian Voivodeship Rivers of Podlaskie Voivodeship Rivers of Poland Rivers of Volyn Oblast