(The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) connects city traditions with the name of Saint Catherine of Alexandria ( 287 to 305).According to one account, the city was founded in 1787
(the official founding year was set to 1776 in 1976 in an effort to please the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev) as the administrative centre of Russia's newly re-established Azov Governorate (founded in 1775).