Bystraya Sosna River

The Bystraya Sosna is a right tributary of the Don, 296 kilometres long, flowing through the Oryol and Lipetsk regions past Livny and Yelets. The name keeps its promise: the river is largely spring-fed, its current fast and sparkling. Konstantin Paustovsky described it in 'The Book of Wanderings': 'It really was fast and sparkling, carrying the last brown ice floes.' On the river stands Yelets with its white-stone cathedrals, upstream are the ancient Livny. The bridge over the Sosna was the scene of the legendary 1593 parley between Prince Khvorostinin and the envoy of the Crimean khan Kazy-Girey. Near Yelets lies the Lavsky archaeological complex of the 11th–14th centuries with its hillfort and settlements. The Vorgol with its canyon and the Palna — rivers each worthy of their own route — flow into the Sosna. Its mouth is by the village of Zasosenka in the Krasninsky district, where the Sosna gives its waters to the Don.