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).
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.
History
Ancient
In Greek mythology, various contacts with the part of the world that was later named Russia or the Soviet Union are recorded. The area was vaguely described as the Hyperborea ("beyond the North wind") and its mythical inhabitants, the Hyperboreans, were said to have blissfully lived under eternal sunshine. Medea was a princess of Colchis, modern western Georgia, and was entangled in the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The Amazons, a race of fierce female warriors, were placed by Herodotus in Sarmatia (modern Southern Russia and Southern Ukraine).
In historical times, Greeks have lived in the present Black Sea region of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States since long before the foundation of Kievan Rus' (Kyivan Rus'), the first Russian state. The Greek name of Crimea was Tauris, and in mythology it was the home of the tribes who took Iphigenia prisoner in Euripides' play Iphigenia in Tauris.
Trade relations with the Scythians led to the foundation of the first outposts between 750 and 500 BC during the Old Greek Diaspora. In the Eastern part of the Crimea the Bosporan kingdom was founded with Panticapaeum (modern Kerch) as its capital.
The Greeks had to fight off Scythian and Sarmatian (Alan) raiders who prevented them from progressing inland but retained the shores which became the wheat basket of the ancient Greek world. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest the provinces maintained active trading relations with the interior for centuries.
Medieval
Black Sea trade became more important for Constantinople as Egypt and Syria were lost to Islam in the 7th century. Greek missionaries were sent among the steppe people, like the Alans and Khazars. Most notable were the Byzantine Greek monks Saints Cyril and Methodius from Thessalonica in Greek Macedonia, who later became known as the apostles of the Slavs.
Many Greeks remained in Crimea after the Bosporan kingdom fell to the Huns and the Goths, and Chersonesos became part of the Byzantine Empire. Orthodox monasteries continued to function, with strong links with the monasteries of Mount Athos in northern Greece.
Relations with the people from the Kievan Rus principalities were stormy at first, leading to several short lived conflicts, but gradually raiding turned to trading and many also joined the Byzantine military, becoming its finest soldiers. In 965 AD there were 16,000 Crimean Greeks in the joint Byzantine and Kievan Rus army which invaded Bulgaria.
Subsequently, Byzantine power in the Black Sea region waned, but ties between the two people were strengthened tremendously in cultural and political terms with the baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus in 988 and the subsequent Christianization of his realm.
The post as Metropolitan bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church was, in fact, with few exceptions, held by a Byzantine Greek all the way to the 15th century. One notable such prelate was Isidore of Kiev.