Greeks in Ukraine
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| (91,548 (2001)) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Donetsk Oblast | 77,516 (2001) |
| Crimea | 2,795 (2001) |
| Zaporizhia Oblast | 2,179 (2001) |
| Odessa Oblast | 2,083 (2001) |
| other regions of Ukraine | 6,975 (2001) |
| Languages | |
| Russian (88.5%), Urum, Rumeíka | |
| Religion | |
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|
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks | |
Greeks in Ukraine are a Hellenic minority that resides in Ukraine or used to live on territory of modern Ukraine. Most of them live in Donetsk Oblast and particularly concentrated around the city of Mariupol. According to the 2001 Ukrainian Census, in Ukraine resides 91,548 ethnic Greeks that is 0.2% of whole population of Ukraine. However, the actual percentage of those with Greek ancestry is likeky to be much higher, due to widespread intermarriage between ethnic Greeks and those Ukrainian citizens who are Russian Orthodox, particularly in eastern Ukraine, and the absence of strong links to Greece or use of the Greek language by many with Greek ancestry in these areas and who therefore are not classified as Greeks in official censuses.
Greeks in Ukraine belong to the larger Greek diaspora known as Pontic Greeks.
A Greek presence throughout the Black Sea area existed long before the beginnings of Kievan Rus. For most of their history in this area, the history of the Greeks in Russia and in Ukraine forms a single narrative, of which a division according to present-day boundaries would be an artificial anachronism.
Greeks established colonies on what are now the Ukrainian shores of the Black Sea as early as the 6th century BCE. These colonies traded with various ancient nations around the Black Sea, including Scythians, Maeotae, Cimmerians, Goths and predecessors of the Slavs. These earlier Greek communities had, however, assimilated into the wider, indigenous population of the region. The Greeks of present-day Ukraine are mainly the descendants of various waves of especially Pontic Greek refugees and 'economic migrants' who left the region of Pontus and the Pontic Alps in northeastern Anatolia between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461 and the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29, although some had settled in Ukraine in the late-19th or early-20th centuries. Other Greeks arrived in Ukraine even later, particularly, as Greek Communist refugees from mainly Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece, who had fled their homes following the 1946-49 Greek Civil War and settled in the USSR, Czechoslovakia, and other Eastern Block states. However, even among these late arrivals there were many communist Greek refugees who settled in Ukraine following the Greek Civil War who were in fact Pontic Greeks or Caucasus Greeks, and therefore often had ancestors who had lived within the southern territories of the Russian Empire before settling in Greece in the early 20th century.
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Wikipedia