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67-644: In a broad sense, it is the name of the entire Great Eurasian Steppe , which was also called Great Scythia in ancient times or Great Tartary in the Middle Ages in European sources and Desht-i-Kipchak in Eastern (mainly Persian) sources. According to Ukrainian historian Vitaliy Shcherbak, the term appeared sometime in the 15th century for territory between the Dniester and mid- Volga when colonization of

134-686: A branch of the Uralic language family, who previously lived in the steppe in what is now Southern Russia, settled in the Carpathian basin in year 895. Mongolic languages are in Mongolia. In Manchuria one finds Tungusic languages and some others. Tengrism was introduced by Turko-Mongol nomads. Nestorianism and Manichaeism spread to the Tarim Basin and into China, but they never became established majority religions. Buddhism spread from

201-581: A central desert. It often behaved as a westward extension of Mongolia and connected Mongolia to the Kazakh Steppe. To the north of Dzungaria are mountains and the Siberian forest. To the south and west of Dzungaria, and separated from it by the Tian Shan mountains, is an area about twice the size of Dzungaria, the oval Tarim Basin . The Tarim Basin's arid conditions make it unsuitable for sustaining

268-606: A new state of Cossack Hetmanate was established on the territory of the Wild Fields. Hetman Khmelnytsky made a triumphant entry into Kiev on Christmas 1648, where he was hailed as a liberator of the people from Polish captivity. As ruler of the Hetmanate, Khmelnytsky engaged in state-building across multiple spheres: military, administration, finance, economics, and culture. He invested the Zaporozhian Host under

335-476: A nomadic population. However, along its periphery, rivers descend from the mountains, creating a circle of cities that thrived on irrigation agriculture and engaged in east-west trade. The Tarim Basin formed an island of near civilization in the center of the steppe. The Northern Silk Road went along the north and south sides of the Tarim Basin and then crossed the mountains west to the Fergana Valley . At

402-557: A number of ecoregions , distinguished by elevation, climate, rainfall, and other characteristics and home to distinct animal and plant communities and species and distinct habitat ecosystems . The major centers of population and high culture in Eurasia are Europe, the Middle East, India and China. For some purposes it is useful to treat Greater Iran as a separate region. All these regions are connected directly or indirectly by

469-744: A relatively dry area marked by the Gobi Desert . South of the Mongol Steppe is the high and thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau . The northern edge of the plateau is the Gansu or Hexi Corridor , a belt of moderately dense population that connects China proper with the Tarim Basin . The Hexi Corridor was the main route of the Silk Road . In the southeast the Silk Road led over some hills to

536-557: A result of the treaty, the Zaporozhian Host became an autonomous Hetmanate within the Tsardom of Russia . The period of Hetmanate history known as "the Ruin ", lasting from 1657 to 1687, was marked by constant civil wars throughout the state. The newly re-installed Yurii Khmelnytsky signed the newly composed Pereyaslav Articles that were increasingly unfavorable for the Hetmanate and later led to introduction of serfdom rights. In 1667,

603-477: A rich caravan the steppe nomads could either rob it, or tax it, or hire themselves out as guards. Economically, these three forms of taxation or parasitism amounted to the same thing. Trade was usually most vigorous when a strong empire controlled the steppe and reduced the number of petty chieftains preying on trade. The silk road first became significant and Chinese silk began reaching the Roman Empire about

670-675: Is a predecessor not only of the Silk Road , which developed during antiquity and the Middle Ages , but also of the Eurasian Land Bridge in the modern era. It has been home to nomadic empires and many large tribal confederations and ancient states throughout history, such as the Xiongnu , Scythia , Cimmeria , Sarmatia , Hunnic Empire , Sogdia , Xianbei , Mongol Empire and Göktürk Khaganate . The Eurasian Steppe extends for 8,000 kilometres (5,000 miles) from near

737-652: The Crimean Khanate . And in 1552 the first Ukrainian proto-state Zaporozhian Sich was established. The Wild Fields were traversed by the Muravsky Trail and Izyumsky Trail , important warpaths used by the Crimean Tatars to invade and pillage the Grand Duchy of Moscow . The Crimean-Nogai Raids , a long period of raids and fighting between the Crimean Tatars and Nogai Horde on one side and

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804-673: The Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Grand Duchy of Moscow on the other side, caused considerable devastation and depopulation in the area before the rise of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who periodically sailed down the Dnieper in dugouts from their base at Khortytsia and raided the coast of the Black Sea. The Turks built several fortress towns to defend the littoral, including Kara Kerman and Khadjibey . What made

871-618: The Great Northern War broke out between Russia and Sweden . Mazepa and some Zaporozhian Cossacks allied themselves with the Swedes on October 28, 1708. The decisive battle of Poltava (in 1709) was won by Russia, putting an end to Mazepa's goal of independence, promised in an earlier treaty with Sweden. The Liquidation of the autonomy of the Cossack Hetmanate has begun. During the reign of Catherine II of Russia ,

938-524: The Historical Dictionary of Ukraine , "The population consisted of military colonists from hussar and lancer regiments, Ukrainian and Russian peasants, Cossacks, Serbs, Montenegrins, Hungarians, and other foreigners who received land subsidies for settling in the area." In the 20th century, after the collapse of the USSR, the region was divided among Ukraine, Moldova , and Russia . In 1917,

1005-649: The Izyum Trail were by far the most important. Between 1500 and 1550, 43 Tatar raids used this trail. In the wake of the Russo-Crimean War (1571) , it became increasingly clear that only a defense line south of the Great Zasechnaya cherta would put an end to annual incursions. Such a chain of eleven forts and obstructions, the "Belgorod Defense Line", was constructed at the behest of Boris Godunov , including, among other fortified settlements,

1072-683: The Kurgan hypothesis , their common ancestor is thought to have originated on the Pontic-Caspian steppe. The Tocharians were an early Indo-European branch in the Tarim Basin . At the beginning of written history the entire steppe population west of Dzungaria spoke Iranian languages . From about 500 AD the Turkic languages replaced the Iranian languages first on the steppe, and later in the oases north of Iran . Additionally, Hungarian speakers,

1139-565: The Mongolian gerbil , the little souslik and the bobak marmot . Furthermore, the Eurasian steppe is home to a great variety of bird species. Threatened bird species living there are for example the imperial eagle , the lesser kestrel , the great bustard , the pale-back pigeon and the white-throated bushchat . The primary domesticated animals raised were sheep and goats with fewer cattle than one might expect. Camels were used in

1206-601: The Oka River at Serpukhov almost directly south of Moscow. In the spread out section there were three branches. The western branch was the Muravsky proper which ran northwest to about Valki and then northeast west of Belgorod to Livny. The center or Izyumsky Trail seems to have run directly north along the south-flowing part of the Donets and joined the Muravsky at Stary Oskol . The eastern or Kalmius branch ran east of

1273-871: The Sich and razed it to the ground. The Russian troops disarmed the Cossacks, and the treasury archives were confiscated. This marked the end of the Zaporozhian Cossacks . After a series of Russo-Turkish wars waged by Catherine the Great , the area formerly controlled by the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 1780s, during which nomadic life in these territories ceased to exist in its ancient version. The Russian Empire started active colonization and built many of

1340-563: The Urals to Dzungaria . To the south, it grades off into semi-desert and desert which is interrupted by two great rivers, the Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes), which flow northwest into the Aral Sea and provide irrigation for agriculture. In the southeast is the densely populated Fergana Valley and west of it the great oasis cities of Tashkent , Samarkand and Bukhara along

1407-688: The Zeravshan River . The southern area has a complex history (see Central Asia and Greater Iran ), while in the north, the Kazakh Steppe proper was relatively isolated from the main currents of written history . Along the former Sino-Soviet border , mountains extend north almost to the forest zone, separating the Central Steppe from the Eastern Steppe, leaving only limited grassland in Dzungaria . This discontinuous section of

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1474-495: The domra , traditional costumes such as the kaftan . Russian Cossack and tea culture were strongly influenced by the culture of Asian nomadic peoples. The Eurasian steppes play a major role in Eastern Europe history and the steppes are a subject of many Slavic as well as Russian folk-songs . Muravsky Trail Muravsky Trail or Murava Route ( Russian : Муравский шлях , Ukrainian : Муравський шлях )

1541-741: The temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biome . It stretches through Hungary , Bulgaria , Romania , Moldova , Ukraine , southern Russia , Kazakhstan , Xinjiang , Mongolia and Manchuria , with one major exclave , the Pannonian steppe , located mostly in Hungary . Since the Paleolithic age , the Steppe Route has been the main overland route between Europe , Western Asia , Central Asia , East Asia and South Asia economically, politically, and culturally. The Steppe route

1608-568: The "wild field" so forbidding were the Tatars. Year after year, their swift raiding parties swept down on the towns and villages to pillage, kill the old and frail, and drive away thousands of captives to be sold as slaves in the Crimean port of Kaffa , a city often referred to by Russians as "the vampire that drinks the blood of Rus'...For example, from 1450 to 1586, eighty-six raids were recorded, and from 1600 to 1647, seventy. Although estimates of

1675-609: The 17th century, the east part of the Wild Fields had been settled by runaway peasants and serfs , who made up the core of the Cossackdom . During the Bohdan Khmelnytsky Uprising (from 1648 to 1657) the north part of this area was settled by Cossacks from the Dnieper basin and came to be known as Sloboda Ukraine . After a successful uprising of Bohdan Khmelnytsky , in which he allied with Crimean Tatars ,

1742-667: The Cossack Hetmanate's autonomy was progressively destroyed. After several earlier attempts, the office of hetman was finally abolished by the Russian government in 1764, and his functions were assumed by the Little Russian Collegium, thus fully incorporating the Hetmanate into the Russian Empire . On May 7, 1775, Empress Catherine II issued a direct order that the Zaporozhian Sich was to be destroyed . On June 5, 1775, Russian artillery and infantry surrounded

1809-567: The Cossacks for the third time in 1653, Khmelnytsky realized he could no longer rely on Ottoman support against Poland, and he was forced to turn to Tsardom of Russia for help. Final attempts to negotiate took place in January 1654 in the town of Pereiaslav between Khmelnytsky with Cossack leaders and the Tsar's ambassador, Vasiliy Buturlin , in which the Pereiaslav agreement was signed. As

1876-638: The Donets and joined the others south of Livny . East of these was a route used by the Lesser Nogai Horde which ran from Azov to Livny. The Nogai Road proper was much farther east and ran from near Volgograd through Michurinsk to the Oka at Ryazan . He also mentions three trails running northwest from Perekop to Galicia. The Czarny Trail went north toward Kyiv with a branch at the latitude of Cherkasy going west to Galicia. The Kuczman Trail followed

1943-664: The Eurasian Steppe route which was an active predecessor of the Silk Road . The latter started in the Guanzhong region of China and ran west along the Hexi Corridor to the Tarim Basin. From there it went southwest to Greater Iran and turned southeast to India or west to the Middle East and Europe. A minor branch went northwest along the great rivers and north of the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea. When faced with

2010-560: The Eurasian steppe connects the great steppes of Central Asia and East Asia . The east-west Tian Shan Mountains divide the steppe into Dzungaria in the north and the Tarim Basin to the south. Dzungaria is bounded by the Tarbagatai Mountains on the west and the Mongolian Altai Mountains on the east, neither of which is a significant barrier. Dzungaria has good grassland around the edges and

2077-568: The Pontic steppes of the Wild Fields — Tanais , Olbia , Borysthenes , Nikonion , Tyras . The rule of Great Khazaria on these lands was replaced by Kievan Rus , and Kievan Rus was replaced by the Mongol Empire . The steppes of the Wild Fields were suitable for the development of agriculture, animal husbandry, and crafts, which led to their colonization as early as the Kievan state. This

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2144-933: The Russo-Polish war ended with the Treaty of Andrusovo , which split the Cossack Hetmanate along the Dnieper River: Left-bank Ukraine enjoyed a degree of autonomy within the Tsardom of Russia, while Right-bank Ukraine remained part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and was temporarily occupied by the Ottoman Empire in the period of 1672-1699. After the defeat of the Ottomans at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, Poland managed to recover Right-bank Ukraine by 1690, except for

2211-405: The Wild Fields, when these lands became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . Thus, the Wild Fields were partly inhabited by the Zaporizhian Cossacks , as reflected in works of the Polish theologian and Catholic bishop of Kiev Józef Wereszczyński, who settled there in the 15th century under the condition that they would fight off expansion by the Nogai Horde and the growing danger from attacks by

2278-402: The cities in the Wild Fields, including Odessa , Yekaterinoslav , and Nikolaev . The definition of Wild Fields does not include the Crimean Peninsula. The area was filled with Russian and Ukrainian settlers, and the name "Wild Fields" became outdated; it was instead referred to as New Russia ( Novorossiya ). At the end of the 18th century, the name "Wild Fields" ceased to be used. According to

2345-405: The city of Kiev , and reincorporated it into their respective voivodeships of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, while all the Hetmanate administration was abolished between 1699 and 1704. The period of the Ruin effectively ended when Ivan Mazepa was elected hetman, serving from 1687 to 1708. He brought stability to the Hetmanate, which was again united under a single hetman. During his reign,

2412-405: The civilization of their subjects, lost their nomadic skills and were either assimilated or driven out. Along the northern fringe of the Eurasian steppe, nomads would collect tribute from and blend with the forest tribes (see Khanate of Sibir , Buryats ). Russia paid tribute (compare yasak ) to the Golden Horde from about 1240 to 1480. South of the Kazakh steppe the nomads blended with

2479-409: The conversion of the whole area to agricultural land. In the southeast the Black Sea–Caspian Steppe extends between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea to the Caucasus Mountains . In the west, the Great Hungarian Plain is an island of steppe separated from the main steppe by the mountains of Transylvania . On the north shore of the Black Sea, the Crimean Peninsula has some interior steppe and ports on

2546-491: The drier areas for transport as far west as Astrakhan . There were some yaks along the edge of Tibet . The horse was used for transportation and warfare. The horse was first domesticated on the Pontic–Caspian or Kazakh steppe sometime before 3000 BC, but it took a long time for mounted archery to develop and the process is not fully understood. The stirrup does not seem to have been completely developed until 300 AD (see Stirrup , Saddle , Composite bow , Domestication of

2613-530: The east of India to the Tarim Basin and found a new home in China. By about 1400 AD, the entire steppe west of Dzungaria had adopted Islam . By about 1600 AD, Islam was established in the Tarim Basin while Dzungaria and Mongolia had adopted Tibetan Buddhism . Raids between tribes were prevalent throughout the region's history. This relates to the ease with which a defeated enemy's flocks and herds can be driven away, making raiding profitable. In terms of warfare and raiding, in relation to sedentary societies,

2680-414: The east-flowing Wei River valley which led to the North China Plain . South of the Khingan Mountains and north of the Taihang Mountains , the Mongolian-Manchurian steppe extends east into Manchuria as the Liao Xi steppe. In Manchuria, the steppe grades off into forest and mountains without reaching the Pacific. The central area of forest-steppe was inhabited by pastoral and agricultural peoples, while to

2747-443: The horse and related articles). Parts of the Eurasian steppe experience an ecological regime shift in form of woody plant encroachment , such as the Black Sea-Kazakhstan steppe, the Tibetan Plateau steppe, and the Central Asian steppe. This process involves the gradual increase of shrubs at the expense of grasses. The World Wide Fund for Nature divides the Eurasian steppe's temperate grasslands , savannas and shrublands into

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2814-512: The horse gave the nomads an advantage of mobility. Horsemen could raid a village and retreat with their loot before an infantry -based army could be mustered and deployed. When confronted with superior infantry, horsemen could simply ride away, retreat and regroup. Outside of Europe and parts of the Middle East, agrarian societies had difficulty raising a sufficient supply of war horses and often had to enlist cavalry from their nomadic enemies (as mercenaries ). Nomads could not easily be pursued onto

2881-457: The khan of the Golden Horde. After the devastation of these lands by the Tatar-Mongols , the Black Sea steppes were called the "Wild Field" (wilderness) for a long time. In 1441, the western section of the Wild Fields, Yedisan , came to be dominated by the Crimean Khanate , a political entity controlled by the expanding Ottoman Empire from the 16th century onward. The 14th and 15th centuries were particularly favorable for Ukrainians to settle

2948-419: The land. The army traveled in columns. Beauplan estimated a column as 800 to 1,000 paces across and up to 10 leagues long. 'It was an amazing sight since 80,000 Tatars were accompanied by more than 200,000 horses'. On nearing enemy territory they camped for a few days and sent out scouts to be sure there were no significant forces in the area. After penetration they sent out two wings of up to 10,000 men each from

3015-402: The leadership of its Hetman with supreme power in the new Ruthenian state, and he unified all the spheres of Ukrainian society under his authority. This involved building a government system and a developed military and civilian administration out of Cossack officers and Ruthenian nobles, as well as the establishment of an elite within the Cossack Hetman state. After the Crimean Tatars betrayed

3082-562: The main body to sweep the country for 10 or 12 leagues around, taking women, children, horses, sheep and cattle and those men who chose not to resist. When these wings returned to the main corps, other wings were sent out in the same manner. Having 'harvested' an area they withdrew by a different route. They did not waste time attacking fortified towns and avoided fighting organized forces unless they were forced to defend themselves. The returning columns, laden with booty, were most vulnerable to counterattack. The need to guard and escort captives kept

3149-444: The main steppe by the Carpathian Mountains . It is found in modern-day Austria , Hungary , Romania , Serbia and Slovakia . The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is the main European end of the Eurasian Steppe and begins near the mouth of the Danube , stretching northeast almost to Kazan and then southeast to the southern tip of the Ural Mountains . Its northern edge was a broad band of forest steppe which has now been obliterated by

3216-525: The mixture of agriculture and pastoralism in Manchuria its inhabitants, the Manchu knew how to deal with both nomads and the settled populations and therefore were able to conquer much of northern China when both Chinese and Mongols were weak. The steppe culture of Russia was shaped in Russia through cross-cultural contact mostly by Slavic, Tatar-Turkic, Mongolian and Iranian people. Rus' rulers would ally themselves by marriage with fellow-steppe peoples. In addition to ethnicity, also instruments such as

3283-422: The mouth of the Danube in Romania to the western edge of Manchuria . It is bounded on the north by the forests of European Russia and Asian Russia or Siberia . There is no clear southern boundary although the land becomes increasingly dry as one moves south. The steppe narrows at two points, dividing it into three major parts. The Pannonian Steppe is a western exclave of the Eurasian Steppe, separated from

3350-414: The north and east was a thin population of hunting tribes of the Siberian type. Big mammals of the Eurasian steppe were the Przewalski's horse , the saiga antelope , the Mongolian gazelle , the goitered gazelle , the wild Bactrian camel and the onager . The gray wolf , corsac fox , Pallas's cat and occasionally the brown bear are predators roaming the steppe. Smaller mammal species are

3417-522: The number of captives taken in a single raid reached as high as 30,000, the average figure was closer to 3000...In Podilia alone, about one-third of all the villages were devastated or abandoned between 1578 and 1583. In the 16th and 17th centuries, the government of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth considered the Ukrainian lands to the east and south of Bila Tserkva to be the Wild Fields, and distributed them to magnates and nobility as private property as uninhabited, although Ukrainians lived there. By

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3484-473: The ratio of captives to raiders to about 1:3. Individual Mirzas would lead smaller-scale raids with a few thousand men. They would send out scouts to look for enemy forces and capture prisoners for interrogation and then sweep through an area 10 to twelve leagues broad, rendezvousing at a pre-arranged point each night. If attacked they would split into bands of about 100 men (" chambuly ") and scatter in all directions, reuniting later. According to Davies,

3551-405: The region by Zaporozhian Cossacks started. Shcherbak notes that the term's contemporaries, such as Michalo Lituanus , Blaise de Vigenère , and Józef Wereszczyński , wrote about the great natural riches of the steppes and the Dnieper basin . Due to its location, this region has long been among the least populated in Europe. However, from the beginning of the first millennium BC to the middle of

3618-411: The relative strength of the nomadic and agrarian heartlands. Over the last few hundred years, the Russian steppe and much of Inner Mongolia has been cultivated. The fact that most of the Russian steppe is not irrigated implies that it was maintained as grasslands as a result of the military strength of the nomads. According to the most widely held hypothesis of the origin of the Indo-European languages ,

3685-526: The rivers were frozen. Davies says that the journey to Moscow took 55 days. Larger raids were led by the Khan in person. The core of his force was a guard of 200-1000 musketeers with light artillery and supply carts that could be formed into a wagenburg . The main force consisted of horse archers with reflex bows and short stirrups. They also had sabers and lances and the richer ones might have chain mail, helmets or muskets. Each man brought one or two spare horses. They carried few supplies, preferring to live off

3752-413: The route followed the high ground between the basins of the Dnieper and Don, making an almost straight line from the Dnieper bend to Tula. It ran mostly through thinly populated tallgrass steppe country ('Muravá' is an old Slavic word for prairie or grassland) avoiding forests, marshes and river crossings. Apart from the main route, there were a number of branches and bypaths, of which the Kalmius Trail and

3819-542: The second millennium AD, it became an arena of intense struggle between settled agricultural tribes and steppe nomads. Since ancient times, the nomadic way of life has prevailed in the Wild Fields, and settled life (civilization) was established with great difficulty. For centuries, the region was only sparsely populated by various nomadic groups such as Scythians , Sarmatians , Alans , Huns , Cumans , Khazars , Bulgars , Pechenegs , Kipchaks , Turco-Mongols , Tatars and Nogais . There were Pontic Greek colonies on

3886-438: The sedentary population, partly because the Middle East has significant areas of steppe (taken by force in past invasions) and pastoralism. There was a sharp cultural divide between Mongolia and China and almost constant warfare from the dawn of history until the Qing conquest of Dzungaria in 1757. The nomads collected large amounts of tribute from the Chinese and several Chinese dynasties were of steppe origin. Perhaps because of

3953-439: The south coast which link the steppe to the civilizations of the Mediterranean basin. The steppe narrows around the southern end of the Ural Mountains , about 650 km (400 mi) northeast of the Caspian Sea , forming the Ural-Caspian Narrowing, that joins the Pontic-Caspian Steppe in Europe with the Kazakh Steppe in Central Asia . The Kazakh Steppe makes up most of the Eurasian Steppe in Central Asia. It extends from

4020-478: The steppe since the steppe could not easily support a land army. If the Chinese sent an army into Mongolia, the nomads would flee and come back when the Chinese ran out of supplies. But the steppe nomads were relatively few and their rulers had difficulty holding together enough clans and tribes to field a large army. If steppe nomads conquered an agricultural area they often lacked the skills to administer it. If they tried to hold agrarian land they gradually absorbed

4087-413: The time that the Emperor of Han pushed Chinese power west to the Tarim Basin. The nomads would occasionally tolerate colonies of peasants on the steppe in the few areas where farming was possible. These were often captives who grew grain for their nomadic masters. Along the fringes there were areas that could be used for either plowland or grassland. These alternated between one and the other depending on

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4154-409: The towns of Livny (1586), Voronezh (1586), Kursk (1587, rebuilt), Yelets (1592, rebuilt), Stary Oskol (1593), Valuyki (1593) and Belgorod (1596, rebuilt). After this, the Tatars began avoiding this route. It later became a main route used by the Cossacks to raid Crimea. The Tatars preferred to invade at harvest time when forage was plentiful. Smaller raids were made in early winter when

4221-500: The trail started at Perekop (about 1100 km south of Moscow) and ran northeast parallel to the Sea of Azov coast about two thirds of the way and then swung north along the watershed between the basins of the Dnieper River and Donets . There it spread into branches through what later became the Sloboda Ukraine , the branches rejoining at Stary Oskol (618 km south of Moscow) and Livny (about 375 km south of Moscow). From Livny it went directly north to Tula and crossed

4288-401: The west end of the basin the Pamir Mountains connect the Tian Shan Mountains to the Himalayas . To the south, the Kunlun Mountains separate the Tarim Basin from the thinly peopled Tibetan Plateau . The Mongolian-Manchurian Steppe is the main part of the Eurasian Steppe in East Asia. It covers large parts of Mongolia and the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia . The two are separated by

4355-441: The world's first anarchist state was formed on the territory of Wild Fields — Makhnovia . The territory of Wild Fields is located in the modern Dnipro , Donetsk , Zaporizhzhia , Kirovohrad , Luhansk , Mykolaiv , Odesa , Poltava , Kharkiv and Kherson oblasts of Ukraine . Eurasian Steppe The Eurasian Steppe , also called the Great Steppe or The Steppes , is the vast steppe ecoregion of Eurasia in

4422-441: Was an important trade route and an invasion route of the Crimean Nogays during the Russo-Crimean Wars of the 16th and early 17th centuries. As described in the Book to the Great Chart of Muscovy (1627), the route went north from the Tatar fortress of Or Qapı ( Perekop ), the gateway of the Crimean peninsula , east of the Dnieper , to the Russian fortress of Tula , 193 km south of Moscow. To avoid major river crossings,

4489-403: Was hindered by the raids of steppe nomads that roamed these lands in waves. After the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' , the territory was ruled by the Golden Horde until the Battle of Blue Waters (1362), which allowed Algirdas to claim it for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania . As a result of the Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399, his successor Vytautas lost the territory to Temür Qutlugh ,

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