Bulgarians and Gagauz Who Settled the Budjak Steppe

In southwestern Odesa Oblast, in the area between the lower reaches of the Danube and the Dniester, ethnic Bulgarians and the Gagauz — Orthodox Christians who speak a Turkic language — have long lived in concentrated communities. In the 2001 All-Ukrainian Population Census, Odesa Oblast had about 150,700 Bulgarians, or 6.1% of the oblast’s population, and about 27,600 Gagauz, or 1.1%. The State Statistics Committee recorded people of 133 ethnicities living in the oblast. Ukraine has held a census only this one time, so there is no more recent official count.

The Land Called Budjak

Historically, this area has been called Budjak. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta, describes Budjak as a 16th- to 19th-century name for southern Bessarabia, lying between the lower Danube and the lower Dniester — flat steppe in the south, rolling steppe in the north. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was inhabited by the Budjak Horde (a Nogai nomadic group), and under the 1812 Treaty of Bucharest it passed, along with the rest of Bessarabia, from the Ottoman Empire to the Russian Empire. How the historical region name Bessarabia maps onto today’s oblasts is covered in our article on historical region names distinct from oblast names.

People Who Moved North from Below the Danube

According to the IEU’s entry on “Bulgarians in Ukraine” (updated 2020), the Bulgarian communities now found in southern Ukraine were formed by people who moved from areas south of the Danube that were under Ottoman rule. The migration was tied to wars between Russia and the Ottoman Empire: Bulgarians assisted the Russian army, and the Russian government wanted to settle its southern steppes quickly, the entry states.

• 1769–1791: A large influx of Bulgarians into Bessarabia (Izmail, Kyliia, Bender, Akkerman, and other areas).
• 1801–1812: The period of most active settlement. Bulgarians settled south of Odesa, near Mykolaiv, near Feodosia in Crimea, and in southern Bessarabia. There were about 24,000 settlers by 1819.
• 1830–1834: The last large wave of migration to the south.
• 1844: There were 92 Bulgarian settlements in Ukraine, with a population of 75,000 (3.3% of the population of Bessarabia, Kherson, and Taurida provinces).
• When part of southern Bessarabia passed to the Principality of Moldavia under the 1856 Treaty of Paris, the Russian government relocated about 30,000 Bulgarians to the Sea of Azov coast, around Berdiansk and Melitopol, in 1861–1862.

According to the IEU, after the 1791 Treaty of Jassy, some of Bessarabia’s Bulgarians also moved to Odesa (the origins of the town of Odesa are covered in our article on Odesa’s beginnings). As a legacy of the migration to the Sea of Azov coast, the IEU notes that the 2001 census recorded 27,764 Bulgarians in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

As for the Gagauz, the IEU states that their origin is not clear. One theory holds they descend from Turkic Oghuz or Cuman (Polovtsian) peoples who settled in Dobruja in the Middle Ages; another holds they are Bulgarians who became Turkified from the 14th century on. The IEU explains that, while they speak a Turkic language, they are Orthodox Christians rather than Muslims, their culture is close to that of the Bulgarians, and they migrated to Bessarabia together with Bulgarians around the time of the Russo-Turkish wars of the early 19th century. The National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ESU) likewise states that the ancestors of Ukraine’s Gagauz were people who fled from Bulgaria to Bessarabia during the era of the Russo-Turkish wars, and that they farmed, herded livestock, and grew grapes in Budjak. Today the largest concentration of Gagauz live in Gagauzia, an autonomous region in southern Moldova (ESU).

Bolhrad, a Town Founded in 1821

The town of Bolhrad, on the shore of Lake Yalpuh, has been a center of the Bulgarian community. According to Ukraine’s national encyclopedia, the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia (VUE), and the ESU, the town was founded in 1821, on the initiative of Ivan Inzov, the governor of Bessarabia, near Tabaky, one of the earliest settlements, as a hub for organizing Bulgarian settlement. According to the VUE, it was built as a planned town, with straight streets and a central square.

The country Bolhrad belonged to changed repeatedly. According to the VUE, it passed to the Principality of Moldavia (later Romania) under the 1856 Treaty of Paris after the Crimean War, and returned to the Russian Empire at the 1878 Congress of Berlin. It was part of Romania from 1918, was incorporated into the Soviet Union in 1940 as a district center of Izmail Oblast, and has belonged to Odesa Oblast since 1954.

The town was also a center of Bulgarian-language education. The VUE describes a gymnasium (secondary school) opened in Bolhrad in 1858 as the first Bulgarian secondary educational institution founded outside Bulgaria. The ESU states that the Central Bulgarian School, named for Cyril and Methodius, opened in 1853 and became a gymnasium in 1886 — the founding year differs between the two encyclopedias.

The Spread, Seen Through the 2001 Census

Bulgarians and Gagauz are concentrated in the southwestern districts of Odesa Oblast. Using the census’s district-level figures (for the districts as they existed in 2001), the districts where Bulgarians or Gagauz made up roughly 10% or more of the population are as follows.

Nationwide, there were 204,574 Bulgarians in 2001, of whom 73.7% lived in Odesa Oblast (IEU). There were 31,923 Gagauz (ESU). According to the IEU, 58.7% of Bulgarians lived in rural areas.

The census also has figures on native language. Among Bulgarians, 64.2% named their own ethnic language as their native tongue, as did 71.5% of Gagauz. Russian was named as native language by 30.3% of Bulgarians and 22.7% of Gagauz, and Ukrainian by 5.0% and 3.5% respectively. The IEU states that the absence of Bulgarian-language schools and publishing during the Soviet era advanced Russification.

For schools, the fact that Bulgarian is an official EU language matters. A December 2023 amendment to the law expanded the extent to which classes for minority languages that are official EU languages can continue teaching in that language from grade 5 onward. Gagauz, not being an official EU language, does not receive this treatment. The mechanism is covered in our article on the language of Hungarian-minority schools.

The 2020 District Reorganization and Bulgaria’s Response

During the 2020 reorganization of local administration (see our article on oblasts, raions, and hromadas), the treatment of Bolhrad district became an issue between Ukraine and Bulgaria.

According to reporting by Ukrinform, Bulgaria’s National Assembly adopted a declaration on May 20, 2020, on the reform of Ukraine’s administrative divisions and the protection of the rights and integrity of the Bulgarian community, opposing the division of Bolhrad district in Odesa Oblast. Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) reported that the member of parliament who proposed it stated that “Bolhrad district is set to be divided into five independent administrative units,” and that the declaration also called for updating a protocol between the two countries’ education ministries on Bulgarian-language education.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry issued a statement strongly protesting this declaration (reported by Ukrinform on May 21, 2020). While stating that administrative-division matters are for Ukraine’s authorities alone to decide and that attempts by a foreign country to interfere in this are unacceptable, it also said that “the question of Bolhrad district will be resolved in accordance with Ukrainian law, taking into account the position of local residents, including the large Bulgarian community.” BNR reported, citing an announcement by Bulgaria’s foreign ministry, that Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Kuleba told Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister Zaharieva in a phone call that Bolhrad district would keep its current borders and would not be divided.

A resolution adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on July 17, 2020 (No. 807-IX) abolished all the former districts of Odesa Oblast and established new ones. The new Bolhrad district consists of the territories of 10 hromadas (local communities), including Bolhrad, Artsyz, and Tarutyne, with its center at the city of Bolhrad. The center towns of the three former districts of Bolhrad, Artsyz, and Tarutyne, shown in the table above, all fell within the new Bolhrad district.

A Call to Recognize the Gagauz as an Indigenous People (2026)

According to reporting by local media outlets such as 048.ua, the Odesa Oblast Council adopted an appeal on September 11, 2026, calling on the Verkhovna Rada to recognize the Gagauz as an indigenous people of Ukraine. The oblast council member who proposed the appeal stated that about 95% of Ukraine’s Gagauz live in Odesa Oblast. The 2021 law on indigenous peoples names three indigenous peoples: the Crimean Tatars, Karaites, and Krymchaks (see our article on Ukraine’s indigenous peoples law). It is up to the Verkhovna Rada to decide whether to add the Gagauz, and as of September 2026 no law to do so has been enacted.