During World War II, the area was occupied by Nazi Germany at the conclusion of Operation Barbarossa. It returned to Soviet control following the Donbas strategic offensive of August 1943.
The village came to international attention when it became the site of much of the debris from the destruction of the Boeing 777 operating Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, which was shot down in the region on 17 July 2014, killing all 298 on board.[5] At the time, Hrabove was in the area contested by Ukrainian military forces and Russian people's militias as part of the war in Donbas,[6] and since 2014 has been under the control of the Donetsk People's Republic.[7]
Politics and national identities
Since 2010 the head of the village council has been Volodymyr Berezhnyi (born 1955).
The 2001 census indicated a population of 1,000 people, categorized according to preferred mother tongue as 77.5 percent Ukrainian speaking and 22.0 percent Russian speaking, with a handful of Belarusian speakers.[8] Most people living in the village identify as Ukrainian.