[1] Hrabove is located beside the Mius river, some ten kilometers north-east of Shakhtarsk, and on the border between the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast.

Following the outbreak of the war in Donbas in 2014, Hrabove fell under the control of the Russian-backed breakaway Donetsk People's Republic.

In 2022, Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine and unilaterally annexed Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

In Ukrainian law, Hrabove and the other annexed regions remain part of the "temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine".

The village came to international attention when it became the site of much of the debris from the destruction of the Boeing 777 operating Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, which was shot down in the region on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 on board.