The City's founding date is disputed with historical assertions ranging from 1540 to 1627. Some academics believe that the city was built upon the orders Russia's first Tsar Ivan the Terrible who reigned from 1547 to 1584.[citation needed]
A military fort was built adjacent to the city in 1638 by Ukrainian Cossacks of Yakiv Ostryanyn (see Ostryanyn uprising) on the order of Muscovite Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich. A military presence of some form near Chuhuiv has remained ever since. The Chuguev uprising of 1819 was a revolt of military settlers.
During the government of the Soviet Union, the base became an important military training center. It has been home to the Soviet Air Force Pilot Academy and the Red Army's Artillery School. There is now a Ukrainian Air Force base adjacent to the town.
There are eight schools in Chuhuiv (grades 1–11), where several Peace Corps volunteers have served since 2004.
Until 18 July 2020, Chuhuiv was incorporated as a city of oblast significance and the center of Chuhuiv Municipality. The municipality was abolished in July 2020 as part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Kharkiv Oblast to seven. The area of Chuhuiv Municipality was merged into Chuhuiv Raion.[8][9]
Russia partly captured the city in late February, being on the outskirts of it.[11] On 7 March 2022, Ukrainian forces retook the city and reportedly inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces, allegedly killing two high-ranking Russian officers during the battle.[12]
There were six pre-school educational institutions and one pre-school unit as part of the Teaching and Educational Complex No. 6 in the city, in the 2013–2014 academic year; they educated 1 195 preschoolers between the ages of 2 and 6 (7) years old.[16]
As of the 2001 census in Ukraine, Chuhuiv had a population of 37,348. The majority of the city's population are ethnic Ukrainians, yet it has the highest incidence of people with a Russian background in any major settlement in the entire Kharkiv region. The exact distribution of the population by ethnicity according to the 2001 census was:[29]