I.

Introduction

Russo-Turkish Wars, series of conflicts between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, which was centered in what is now Turkey, during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, in the course of which Russia gained control of the northern shore of the Black Sea and extended its influence into the Balkans.

The first direct confrontation came in the war between 1677 and 1681, in which Russia acquired control over the Ukraine east of the Dnieper River. Tsar Peter the Great, who assumed power in 1689, soon resumed the struggle against the Ottomans, and in two campaigns in 1695 and 1696 he captured the fortress of Azov. In 1710, Peter again went to war with the Ottoman Empire as a result of the latter's support of Sweden during the Great Northern War (1700-1721), but a Russian campaign in Moldavia ended in disaster, and the Ottomans recovered Azov in the Treaty of the Pruth (1711). Russia fought another war against the Ottoman Empire between 1736 and 1739 in alliance with Austria. In the Treaty of Belgrade (1739), Azov was ceded to Russia along with a section of the Black Sea steppe between the Donets and Bug rivers, but the Russians had to raze the fortifications at Azov and were not permitted to have any ships on the Black Sea.