Severia

Severia was a historical region in the basin of the Desna and Seim rivers, now divided between north-eastern Ukraine and south-western Russia, named after the East Slavic Severians. Its towns included Novgorod-Seversky, Starodub, Putivl and Rylsk. Held by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the fourteenth century, it passed to Moscow in the war of 1500–1503, was ceded to Poland-Lithuania in 1618 and returned to Russia in the mid-seventeenth century.