The site for the battle is a couple of km outside of town. I and Oksana grabbed a cab went there. While riding our way, Oksana spoke a lot with the driver and then gave me the short summary: The man had been running an advertising company in Donetsk, but had fled to Poltava. The taxi driver was clearly pro-Ukrainian, but his partner in the firm was still in Donetsk and had sided with the separatists.

The area around the battlefield includes a museum which displays the events leading up to the battle, where the Swedish king fought together with Cossack forces under the leadership of Ivan Mazepa against Tsar Peter's Russian army. This is a model of the battlefield, with the Russian camp in the foreground.

We had an English-speaking guide to take us through the exhibits. As long as we did the tour, she kept her presentation in a fairly neutral voice, maybe I sensed a slight bias for the winner. But as we had finished the tour and we chatted a bit, I made the comment that "we lost the battle", she said with quite some emphasis "We also lost it!". Indeed, had the Swedish-Cossack forces been able to resist the Russian army, not only would Sweden have remained a great power longer, but Ukraine might have achieved statehood a lot earlier.