Shakhove is a village in the Pokrovsk Raion of Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of the Shakhove rural hromada. Its population was about 900 (2001 estimate). As residents have fled during Russia's Pokrovsk offensive, the population was estimated to be around 72 people in October 2025, shortly before the village's capture by Russian forces.
The village was founded following the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774 by Oleksiy Hryhorovych Shakhov, who was a captain in the Imperial Russian Army, and named the settlement originally after his first name. After the establishment of multiple factories in the village and its renaming, it was made the center of the Kazennoye-Torskoye-Alekseyevskoye volost in Bakhmut uezd. In 1912, just before the outbreak of World War One, the village reached its peak population of 1,185 people. After the fall of Imperial Russia and its takeover by the Soviet Union, it was renamed to Oktyabrskoye. In the subsequent decades, a new collective farm was opened entitled "Rossiia", and new buildings were built. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the village became part of Ukraine, which in 2016 renamed it to Shakhove. Shakhove was the popular name used by peasants that came from the last name of the founder of the village.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the village became the site of significant fighting due its proximity to both Dobropillia and Pokrovsk during the Pokrovsk offensive. Following months of fighting, the village was captured by Russian forces sometime in late November to early December 2025. Russia calls Shakhove by its pre-2016 name Oktyabrskoye and considers it to be part of the Donetsk People's Republic, which it claims to have annexed.
Name
Current names
Former names Oktyabrskoye (; ); 1919–2016 Kazennoye-Torskoye-Alekseyevskoye (; ); c. early 1800s-1919. Also variously referred to in documents as Torsko-Oleksiyivka, Kazennotorske, and Shakhova. Oleksiyivka c. 1770s-c. early 1800s
Name history The original name of the village was Oleksiyivka when the village was established following the Russo-Turkish War, after the founder's first name, Oleksiy Hryhorovych Shakhov. It went by this name until the name was changed in the early 1800s in order to avoid confusion with a village of the same name near the modern-day city of Bakhmut, as it caused administrative and postal confusion. The official name from then on in the Russian Empire was Kazennoye-Torskoe-Oleksiyevskoye. The name chosen was a compound: it combines the river on which the village sat (Kazennyi Torets) with the river name Torets and finally the original name of the village Oleksiyevskoye (which is also referred to as Oleksiyivka). It was also variously known under shortened official variants like Torsko-Oleksiyivka, Kazennotorske, and the folk name Shakhova that was used by the peasants of the village. The name of the village stayed this way until the October Revolution, when the empire fell and it was replaced by the Soviet Union, which changed the name from Kazennoye-Torskoe-Oleksiyevskoye to Oktyabrskoye, which means "of October".
The Soviet name of the village would stay for nearly a century until 2016. Following 2014, the Decommunization in Ukraine would take effect. In May 2015, President Petro Poroshenko approved the renaming of all public places that were named after Soviet communists, with the municipal governments having the first choice unless they decided not to rename it, in which case the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine would do so. Per this law, in 2016 the village was renamed back to Shakhove, which was the name used in folk usage since at least when the village was founded. Shakhove was derived from the surname of the founding landlord family, Oleksiy Hryhorovych Shakhov, who founded the village, and the village continued to be ruled by the Shakhov family up until 1868.
Russia calls Shakhove by its pre-2016 name Oktyabrskoye in official documents, as it claims to have annexed the village.
History Early history
In 2014, archaeologists associated with the Donetsk Regional Museum of Local History and led by found a kurgan 10–12 km from the village that was half a meter high but 35–40 meters wide. The kurgan contained a double burial site that was dated to the Late Bronze Age, and, according to the researchers, was the work of the Srubnaya culture and was probably 3,500 to 3,600 years old. They also found a vessel that was decorated with red ochre, which was unusual for the culture, alongside a vessel that had sacred symbols including swastikas from the Indo-Aryans. Next to the site was also a pagan temple, suggesting that the site was likely a burial place for nobility.
There were previously, as described in a map dated to 1749, Cossack tunnels under the site of the modern-day village around the southern outskirts. Most of the tunnels have since collapsed, with only two small passages being preserved.
Imperial village
The first semblance of the village was recorded in a 1749 map by a Russian surveyor named Bybikov, who was recording Sloboda Ukraine. In the map, there is a fortress at the site of the Shakhove, which in the document is described as the fortress at the summit of the river Kazennyi Torets, so it was in military use. The actual founding of the village dates back to when Oleksiy Hryhorovych Shakhov, who was a sub-lieutenant and later captain in the Imperial Russian Army and a member of the Kursk nobility, received 5,200 desiatins of land after the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. He named the land as the village of Oleksiyivka (also Oleksiivka), where he and his serfs, whom he brought with him, lived.
By 1795, the village's first church was established, the Church of the Life-Giving Trinity. Prior to this, since the village was not large enough, residents went to nearby Raiske for the church there, which had been founded shortly before in 1781. Shortly after the founding of the church, in 1795, it is known that there was an uprising in the village by the peasants against Shakhov due to exploitation, but that the uprising was suppressed brutally. By the early 1800s, the village was passed down to Luka Oleksiiovych Shakhov, a relative of the original owner. During this time, the village was renamed from Oleksiyivka to Kazennoye-Torskoye-Alekseyevskoye. This was done in order to prevent confusion with another village of the same name, as post offices and other establishments became confused between the two.
It was also during the time of Luka being the owner that the village encountered severe financial difficulties because he often gambled, which led to large amounts of debt and him having to mortgage the village in 1863. After his death, the estate of the village passed on to his widow, who sold large parts of the land to cover the debt, and so the village only had 1,913 desiatins by this time. However, the village was able to recover as the industry improved. By 1859, there were three factories in the village, with one presumably being for the production of bricks. In 1874, a postal station started to operate on the territory of the village, and a few years later in 1880 a new wax factory was opened under the merchant Ivan Dmitrievich Stepanov. By 1887, it was producing 200 puds of candles annually worth 4,000 rubles, and a decade later it was listed under the directory of "Ukazatel fabrik i zavodov Evropeyskoy Rossii" as employing 10 people.
As the village grew larger, it was named as the center of the Kazennoye-Torskoye-Alekseyevskoye volost of the Bakhmut uezd. In 1874, the village school first appeared in the directory of public schools for Yekaterinoslav Governorate. Industrial additions in the village continued to grow after this. A limestone quarry became active in the village, and the raw materials from the quarry were transported to what is now the city of Kramatorsk and to other factories in the Donbas. There was also a steam mill in the village, first mentioned in 1823, but it was destroyed by fire a century later. In November 1897, a new bridge was also commissioned to cross Kazennyi Torets in order to connect the village of Heevka (or Heiivka), and was 25 fathoms or 53.25 meters long and cost the zemstvo 8,626 rubles and 81 kopecks. In order to bring law enforcement into the village, a police bailiff was also established during the late 1800s.
In 1903, two new buildings were established in the village. The first was a brick school building to replace the previous school that was held in a cottage, and the other was a hospital complex. A few years later, after the bridge that connected the village to Heiivka was destroyed by flooding, in 1909 a new reinforced concrete one was constructed due to the need to reach the city of Druzhkivka, which was only possible via the bridge. By the date 1912, just before World War One broke out, it was recorded that in the village there were two factories, both belonging to the merchant Ivan Dmitrievich Stepanov, which were a wax-bleaching plant and a candle factory.
The Soviet era
After the fall of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union captured and annexed the village during the Russian Civil War into the Ukrainian SSR. The village came under Soviet control with the help of K. M. Yurchenko, P. I. Trembo, and M. P. Denisenko, who were workers from Druzhkivka, but they were later killed by the White Army. In 1919, the village was renamed by the Soviet authorities from its Imperial-era name to Oktyabrskoye, meaning "of October". After the start of World War Two, 380 villagers went to serve in the Soviet Army, of whom 162 died. Notable local veterans were Hryhorii Proshchaiev, who was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union and served with the 235th Assault Aviation Regiment, and Tymofii Ryabokon, who was awarded the Order of the Red Star for killing five soldiers and destroying a German tank at Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi. The village was occupied from the time of Operation Barbarossa until 1943 as part of Reichskommissariat Ukraine by Nazi Germany, when it was then liberated.
In the postwar years, the school reopened under the direction of Olha Kravchenko, and the enrollment peaked at 380 children. In 1947, four teachers were awarded the Order "For Valiant Labor", and a collective farm was opened under the name "Rossiia" that developed cattle, sheep, and pigs. "Rossiia" was recorded as having 3,000 hectares of arable land. In the 1970s, new buildings were also opened up in the village. A new kindergarten named "Topolka" was opened, alongside a House of Culture and a new administrative building for the board of the collective farm and the village council. The new Oktyabrskoye Secondary School was also opened. It was also recorded in "Istoriia mist i sil Ukrainskoi RSR" that the village had a club, a library, a radio station, and a children's center in addition to this.
Independent Ukraine On 14 August 2015, by Order No. 390-395, the village was transferred to the new Shakhove rural hromada as part of the creation of amalgamated hromadas, which it was appointed as the administrative center of. The hromada, previous to Shakhove's renaming in 2016, was known as the Oktyabrske rural hromada. Previous to it being part of this hromada, it was part of the Oktiabrska silska rada.
In 2016, in accordance with the law on the renaming of all place names named after Soviet communists that was approved by the Verkhovna Rada and signed by Petro Poroshenko, the village was renamed from Oktyabrskoye to its present name of Shakhove. Shakhove was the surname of the founding landlord family of the village, and was a folk name in use since at least the time of Imperial Russia in addition to its official name.