It was founded in 1869 as a settlement at the station put into operation on the Kursk-Kharkiv-Azov railway. The Khartsyzsk settlement, which belonged to Major General Ivan Ilovaysky, was founded on the site of the modern city in 1786.
Its name comes from the word "khartsyzy" ("robbers, plunderers"), which was the name used by Turks and Tatars in the sixteenth century for fugitive peasants and Zaporizhzhia Cossacks who settled near the southern borders of the Moscow state. The places of their settlements were called "Khartsyzsk". In 1883, a railway line was laid to the Makiivka mine, and in 1884—to the Krynychna and Yasysivka stations (modern Makiivka-Pasazhyrska), and in 1898—to the Makiivka metallurgical plant "Union".
Unknown armed men took control of the Khartsyzk city hall on 13 April 2014, and declared it part of the Donetsk People's Republic.[7]
By the beginning of Russia's large-scale invasion, Khartsyzsk was under Russian occupation. Preparing for the resumption of the active phase of hostilities, in mid-February, Russian troops staged provocations under the pretext of announcing illegal forced "mobilization" in the city and the occupied part of Donbas in general to join the ranks of illegal terrorist armed groups operating in the region. Serhiy Bratchuk, a spokesperson for the Odesa Regional Military Administration, reported the destruction of a Russian military depot in the city of Khartsyzsk on 9 July 2022.[8]
