Albanians in Ukraine: The Villages That Kept an Old Language

Albanians in Ukraine are a small, old diaspora community living in villages in the country’s south, descended from Orthodox Albanians who left southeastern Albania around the end of the 15th century, lived for about three centuries in eastern Bulgaria, moved to the Russian Empire in the early 19th century, and preserved an archaic form of the Albanian language. Unlike recent migrant communities, Ukraine’s Albanians are a historic settlement that kept its distinct speech and traditions through some five centuries away from the Albanian lands, the last two of them in what is now Ukraine. This guide covers who they are, where they live, and how their language survived.

An Old Balkan Migration

The Albanians of Ukraine trace their origins to groups who left the Balkans, moving north through what is now Bulgaria before settling in the Russian Empire’s southern lands, in territory that is today part of Ukraine. The move from Bulgaria into the Russian Empire happened in stages, mainly in 1809 to 1810 and between 1823 and 1834, followed by a move to the Azov coast in 1861 to 1862, part of the broader movement of Balkan peoples across the region in that era. They belong to the wider family of old Albanian diaspora communities described in Albanians around the world.

Where They Live

Ukraine’s Albanian community is concentrated in a handful of villages in the south of the country, in the Zaporizhzhia and Odesa regions. The best known is Karakurt, in the Bolhrad district of the Odesa region, founded in 1811, where Albanian was traditionally spoken alongside neighboring communities of other Balkan-origin settlers. These villages preserved their distinct character precisely because they were rural and somewhat isolated.

A Preserved Language

The most remarkable feature of the Albanian community in Ukraine is linguistic. Separated from the Albanian lands for some five centuries, they kept speaking an archaic form of Albanian, close to the older Tosk speech of the southern Balkans from which they came. Like the Arbëreshë of Italy and the Arvanites of Greece, they are a living example of how a diaspora can preserve an old layer of a language long after it has changed at home. Their dialect is of real interest to linguists for exactly this reason.

Identity and Continuity

The Albanian villagers of Ukraine have maintained a sense of their distinct origin across generations, through language, memory and custom, even while integrating into their surrounding society. Like many small old diaspora groups, their identity is a heritage identity: a proud awareness of roots rather than a separatist movement. The pressures of modern life, migration to cities and, more recently, the disruptions of war have all affected the community.

Why This Community Matters

The Albanians of Ukraine matter out of proportion to their small numbers. They are one of the clearest surviving examples of how far Albanian-speaking peoples spread across eastern and southeastern Europe, and how tenaciously old diaspora communities can hold onto their language. Alongside the Arbëreshë and Arvanites, they complete the picture of the old Albanian diaspora beyond the Balkans.

Albanians in the Wider Region

For related communities, see our guides to Albanians in Serbia and the old western diaspora of the Arbëreshë in Italy. For the deep origins of the people, see where Albanian people come from.

What the 2001 Census Recorded

The only official count comes from the All-Ukrainian Population Census of 2001, which remains the country’s most recent census. It recorded 3,308 people of Albanian nationality. Of these, 1,740 named Albanian as their native language, 1,181 named Russian, 301 named Ukrainian and 84 named another language.

The regional tables show two quite different communities. In the Odesa region, where the village of Karakurt lies, four out of five Albanians still gave Albanian as their mother tongue. In the Zaporizhzhia region, fewer than one in four did, and most named Russian.

Source: State Statistics Committee of Ukraine, 2001 census, distribution of the population by nationality and mother tongue. The last row and the shares are calculated from the published counts.

Other figures in circulation are estimates. The researcher Aleksandra Dugushina notes that the 1989 Soviet census put the number of Albanians in the Ukrainian republic at about 5,000, and the ethnographer Alexander Novik has used the same estimate for the present day. The Ukrainian media project Ukraїner cites a range of 5,000 to 10,000 “according to various sources,” while adding that fewer than half speak the language. None of these has the standing of a census count.

The Four Villages and Their Old Names

There are four villages, and each has two names, because the Albanian settlers in the Azov region kept using the names of the Nogai settlements they replaced.

Karakurt is the mother village. Dugushina, citing archival figures published by the historian A. V. Shabashov, gives its Albanian population as 637 in 1816, 700 in 1827 and 1,151 in 1847. It was always mixed: Albanians, Bulgarians and Gagauz settled in neighboring quarters. Ukraїner reports that five languages can be heard there today (Albanian, Bulgarian, Gagauz, Ukrainian and Russian) and that, according to the 2001 census, 1,725 of the village’s roughly 3,000 people were Albanians.

Five Centuries on the Move

The journey began much earlier than the settlement in Ukraine. According to Dugushina’s 2024 article in the Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe, the ancestors of these villagers were Orthodox Albanians who left the districts of Devoll, Vithkuq, Korçë and Kolonjë, in southeastern Albania, around the end of the fifteenth century. They settled in eastern Bulgaria, mainly in what is now the Varna region, and lived there for about three hundred years among Bulgarians and Gagauz.

The move to the Russian Empire came in 1809 and 1810, during the Russo-Turkish War of 1806 to 1812, when Budzhak, the southern part of the land between the Dniester and Prut rivers, was being settled by Orthodox colonists from northeastern Bulgaria. Officials called them “Danube colonists” and did not count Albanians and Gagauz separately from Bulgarians. A second wave followed between 1823 and 1834.

The last step came after the Crimean War. When the 1856 Treaty of Paris handed part of southern Bessarabia to the principality of Moldavia, part of Karakurt’s population left, together with many Bulgarians and Gagauz, and in 1861 and 1862 founded the three villages near Melitopol. Ukraїner adds a separate, earlier strand: Albanian volunteers who had served with the Russian navy settled in and around Odesa in the eighteenth century, which is why the city’s historic center has streets named Mala Arnautska and Velyka Arnautska.

Ga Tantë: A Name Before “Albanian”

For most of their history the villagers did not call themselves Albanians at all. Dugushina records that they used the name ga tantë, “of our people,” for themselves and si neve, “our way,” for their language. They learned that their speech was Albanian only in the early twentieth century, from the Russian scholar N. S. Derzhavin, who came across the villages while studying Bulgarian settlements and told the inhabitants they were Arnauts, the Turkish name for Albanians.

Linguists classify the dialect as Northern Tosk. It is used at home and has never had a settled written form. Most speakers also know Gagauz and Bulgarian as well as Russian or Ukrainian, and Dugushina warns that the dialect could become endangered under the pressure of the larger languages.

Much of what is known comes from fieldwork. The ethnographer Y. V. Ivanova conducted regular expeditions to the villages from 1948, and a team from St. Petersburg State University and the Russian Academy of Sciences returned every summer from 2006 to 2013, interviewing more than 200 people. Their recordings and notes are kept in the archive of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Field research was halted after 2014, apart from a 2019 visit to Karakurt, and there have been no field trips since 2022.

A Revival That Began in the 1990s

Public Albanian life in Ukraine is recent. The first organization, the Association of Albanians of Odesa, was founded in 1993. In Karakurt, residents set up a cultural society called Rilindja, “rebirth,” which published a newspaper with folklore texts in the dialect, one of the first efforts to write it down. Two ensembles followed, and a Karakurt native, Fyodor Dermentli, wrote a history of the village that appeared in Russian in 2003 and in Albanian in 2004. A Center for Albanian Culture opened in Karakurt in 2016.

Official contact with Albania came later still. In 2018 a delegation from Albania’s diaspora agency, led by minister Pandeli Majko, visited Karakurt for the first time. In June 2019 specialists from Albania’s national folk ensemble and opera and ballet theater came to teach songs and dances, and in September 2019 the village’s schoolchildren took part in a two-week program of Albanian lessons. Dugushina also notes that two teachers from Karakurt and Divnynske, trained at a summer language seminar in Tirana, now teach standard Albanian in local schools. Every 6 May, Ukraїner reports, the Albanians of Bessarabia mark Skanderbeg’s birthday, sharing a lamb dish called kurban with Gagauz neighbors who celebrate St. George’s Day on the same date.

The Villages Since 2022

Russia’s full-scale invasion divided the community. Karakurt, in the Odesa region, remains under Ukrainian government control. The three villages near Melitopol are, in Dugushina’s words, “now located within the Russian-controlled area.” She reports that Facebook and Instagram, the community’s main link to Albanians elsewhere, have been blocked there under Russian legislation since 2022 and can be reached only through a VPN, that a new Albanian association has been set up with its headquarters in Divnynske, and that researchers no longer conduct in-person interviews for safety reasons.

Men from the community have died in the fighting. In October 2023 Euronews Albania reported, citing Pandeli Majko and Albania’s consul in Ukraine, the deaths of two Ukrainian soldiers of Albanian descent: Anatoly Dermentli, born in Karakurt in 1980, who died on 15 October 2023 on a combat mission while serving with the 118th Mechanized Brigade, and Danylo Haydarzhy, born in Heorhiivka in 2002, who was killed near the village of Liman, near Kupiansk, in the Kharkiv region.

Timeline: Albanians in Ukraine

• Around 1500: Orthodox Albanians from the Korçë area settle in eastern Bulgaria.
• 1809 to 1810: Their descendants move to the Russian Empire during the Russo-Turkish War.
• 1811: Karakurt is founded near Bolhrad.
• 1861 to 1862: Settlers from Karakurt found Tyushki, Taz and Dzhandran near Melitopol.
• Early 1900s: N. S. Derzhavin identifies the villagers’ language as Albanian.
• 1948: Y. V. Ivanova begins regular ethnographic expeditions.
• 1993: The Association of Albanians of Odesa is founded.
• 2001: Ukraine’s census records 3,308 Albanians.
• 2006 to 2013: Annual St. Petersburg expeditions document language and customs.
• 2016: Zhovtneve regains the name Karakurt; a Center for Albanian Culture opens there.
• 2018: Albania’s diaspora minister visits Karakurt.
• 2022: The three Azov villages come under Russian occupation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there Albanians in Ukraine?

Yes. A small, old Albanian community lives in villages in southern Ukraine, descended from Orthodox Albanians who reached the Russian Empire from eastern Bulgaria in the early 19th century. Ukraine’s 2001 census recorded 3,308 Albanians.

Why do Albanians live in Ukraine?

Their ancestors migrated north from the Balkans through Bulgaria and settled in the southern lands of the Russian Empire, now part of Ukraine, over two centuries ago.

Do Albanians in Ukraine still speak Albanian?

Traditionally yes. They preserved an archaic form of Albanian, close to older southern Balkan speech, which is of special interest to linguists. In the 2001 census, 1,740 of the 3,308 Albanians, about half, named Albanian as their native language.

How is this different from recent Albanian migration?

This is a historic community rooted for two centuries, not a recent migrant group, similar in kind to the Arbëreshë of Italy or the Arvanites of Greece.

Learn More

Continue with Albanians around the world, the Arbëreshë of Italy, and the Albanian language.

Sources

• Albanians in Ukraine (Wikipedia)
• Albanian language, diaspora dialects (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
• State Statistics Committee of Ukraine: 2001 Census, distribution of the population by nationality and mother tongue
• Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe: Aleksandra Dugushina, The Albanian Diaspora in Budzhak and Priazovye, A Problem of Language and Identity (2024)
• Ukraїner: Albanians of Ukraine. Who are they?
• Alexander Novik, Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography: Ethnic Albanians in the Ukraine, Patois and Culture (abstract)
• Euronews Albania: Two boys of the Albanian diaspora die in ongoing Ukraine-Russia war (October 2023)

Author: Val Demiri

Valbona is an editor and writer at ALB Connection, where she covers the people, businesses, and culture shaping the Albanian diaspora. A journalism graduate of the University of Iowa, her work spans community profiles, success stories, and features on Albanian life across the US, Europe, and beyond. She is drawn to stories that celebrate Albanian achievement and keep the community connected across borders.