Sverdlovsk Raion

Sverdlovsk Raion (Свердловський район) or Dovzhansk Raion (Довжанський район; Должанский район) was a raion (district) in Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine until 2020. The administrative center of the raion is the city of Sverdlovsk, which is incorporated separately as a city of oblast significance and does not belong to the raion. The last estimates of the population of the raion, reported by the Ukrainian government, were

History
Sverdlovsk Raion was created in 1938, soon after the founding of Sverdlovsk itself by the amalgamation of several local mining villages. In 1962, Sverdlovsk was designated as a city of oblast significance; while it still served as the administrative center of Sverdlovsk Raion, it was no longer part of it, and was instead subordinated directly to Luhansk Oblast. Portions of the raion were also split off and transferred to Krasnodon Raion and Antratsyt Raion.

Territories of Luhansk Oblast have been the subject of fighting by Russian and Russian-controlled militias since 2014. In 2015 a more-or-less stable line of contact was established after the Minsk II ceasefire agreement and conclusion of the battle of Debaltseve, placing the raion on the Russian side (as part of the Luhansk People's Republic), and then directly after the 2022 annexation of four partially occupied Ukrainian oblasts.

In 2016, the Verkhovna Rada renamed Sverdlovsk to Dovzhansk and Sverdlovsk Raion to Dovzhansk Raion, in accordance with the decommunization law, prohibiting the names of Communist origin. On 18 July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Luhansk Oblast to eight, the raion was abolished and reformed as a new Dovzhansk Raion, with its territory significantly extended. Russia continues to use the old name and the old area of the raion.

Demographics
As of the 2001 Ukrainian census:


 * Ethnicity
 * Ukrainians: 69.9%
 * Russians: 25.9%
 * Belarusians: 0.6%