It is located in Chortkiv Raion (district) of Ternopil Oblast (province), and had its origins as a Polish fortress at the meeting of the Zbruch and Dniester rivers.

[2] The stronghold and the neighbouring town were built in 1692, by Stanisław Jan Jabłonowski, Grand Hetman of the Crown.

The site is a natural fortress: a small strip of high rocks linking the Zbruch and Dnister rivers.

The construction was started under the command of the General of Horse Artillery, Marcin Katski, and the works were finished in the same year.

Israel ben Eliezer, a Jewish mystical rabbi and the founder of the Hasidic Jewish movement, was born in Okopy in 1698[7] (although he later lived in nearby Tluste).The stronghold was abandoned in 1699, when the rest of Podolia was returned to Poland, and the fortress lost its importance as a counterbalance to Kamieniec Podolski.

[9] After the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1920, the site was made part of Poland, in the Tarnopol Voivodship, near the Polish border with the Soviet Union and Romania.

The village was renamed "Okopy" and was turned into a Kolkhoz, and soon totally depopulated, as a result of the forced migration of Poles to Siberia.