Greeks in Russia and Ukraine

Greeks in Russia

Monument to the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks in Yessentuki, Russia
Total population
~53,972 (2021)[1]
Regions with significant populations
Stavropol Krai Krasnodar Krai Moscow
Languages
Russian Greek Urum
Religion
Russian Orthodox Church
Related ethnic groups
Pontic Greeks Caucasus Greeks

Greeks have been present in what is now southern Russia from the 6th century BC; those settlers assimilated into the indigenous populations. The vast majority of contemporary Russia's Greek minority populations are descendants of Medieval Greek refugees, traders, and immigrants (including farmers, miners, soldiers, and churchmen/bureaucrats) from the Byzantine Empire, the Ottoman Balkans, and Pontic Greeks from the Empire of Trebizond and Eastern Anatolia who settled mainly in southern Russia and the South Caucasus in several waves between the mid-15th century and the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29. As during the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks, the survivors fled to the Upper Pontus (in the USSR).^[2]

In former Soviet republics, about 70% are Greek speakers who are mainly descendants of Pontic Greeks from the Pontic Alps region of northeast Anatolia, 29% are Turkish-speaking Greeks (Urums) from Tsalka in Georgia, and 1% are Greek speakers from Mariupol in Ukraine.

Ukraine's 2001 census counted 91,500 Greeks in Ukraine.^[3]