Steel, aluminium, aircraft engines, automobiles, transformers for substations, and other heavy industrial goods are produced in the region.

[4] Before 1921, the city was called Aleksandrovsk (or Oleksandrivsk), named after the original fortress that formed a part of the Dnieper Defence Line of the Russian Empire.

Zaporizhzhia was founded in 1770, when the Aleksandrovskaya (Александровская) Fortress was built as a part of the Dnieper Defence Line, to protect the southern territories of the Russian Empire from Crimean Tatar invasions.

[4] The opening of the Kichkas Bridge at the start of the 20th century, the first rail crossing of the Dnieper, was followed by the industrial growth of Zaporizhzhia.

[6] In 1916, during World War I, the DEKA Stock Association transferred its aircraft engine manufacturing plant from Saint Petersburg to Zaporizhzhia.

The opposing armies used the strategically important Kichkas Bridge to transfer troops, ammunition, and medical supplies.

The annual capacity of the mill reached 540,000 tonnes (600,000 short tons) of 170 cm (66 inches) wide steel.

[11] After the outbreak of the War between the USSR and Nazi Germany in June 1941, the Soviet government began evacuating Zaporizhzhia's industries to Siberia.

[13] On 18 August 1941, elements of the German 1st Panzergruppe reached the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia on the right bank and seized the island of Khortytsia.

[17] Adolf Hitler visited the headquarters in February 1943, and again the following month, where he was briefed by Field Marshal Eric von Manstein and his air force counterpart Field Marshal Wolfram Freiherr von Richthofen, and in September 1943,[18] the month the Army Group moved its headquarters to Kirovohrad.

They retreated back to this line in September 1943, holding the city as a bridgehead over the Dnieper with elements of 40th Panzer and 17th Corps.

[20] The Soviet Southwestern Front, commanded by Army General Rodion Malinovsky, attacked Zaporizhzhia on 10 October 1943.

[26] Since the introduction of the law, the city council renamed over 50 streets and administrative areas of the city,[note 3] monuments of the Soviet Union leaders Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky have been destroyed,[27][28] and names honouring Soviet leaders in the titles of industrial plants, factories, culture centres, and the DniproHES have been removed.

On 27 February, fighting was reported in the southern outskirts,[30] and Russian forces began shelling the city later that evening.

[34] On 30 September, hours before Russia formally annexed Southern and Eastern Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces launched S-300 missiles at a civilian convoy in Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 30 people.

Well supplied with electricity, Zaporizhzhia forms, together with the adjoining Donets Basin (Donbas) and the Nikopol manganese and Kryvyi Rih iron mines, one of Ukraine's leading industrial complexes.

Zaporizhstal, Ukraine's fourth largest steel maker, and ranking 54th in the world, is based in the city.

The historical and cultural museum "Zaporizka Sich" is placed on the northern rocky part of Khotritsa Island.

The H08, which starts just outside Kyiv and travels southeast along the Dnieper through Kremenchuk, Kamianske, Dnipro, passes through Zaporizhzhia on the way to Mariupol.

The city's two river ports are part of the national water transportation infrastructure that connects Kyiv to Kherson along the Dnieper.

The mmain association football club of the city is FC Metalurh Zaporizhzhia, whose home ground is Slavutych-Arena.

Zaporizhzhia is a setting in two Axis victory in World War II short novels by the American author Harry Turtledove, Ready for the Fatherland (1991) and The Phantom Tolbukhin (1998).