Ukraine (officially Україна, Ukraina) is a large country on the north side of the Black Sea, bordering Russia to the east. Except for a brief period of independence during the Russian Revolution (1917-20) Ukraine was part of Russian or Soviet empires from the mid seventeenth century until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Meanwhile the coastline of the Black Sea was mostly under the control of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire until it was taken by Russia during a series of wars in the second half of the 1700s. The Black Sea's northern coast is in several sections. In the west is the Bight of Odessa, named for Ukraine's largest port. In the center is the diamond-shaped peninsula of Crimea. To the east is the Sea of Azov, connected to the rest of the Black Sea by the narrow Kerch Strait at the eastern end of Crimea. In March 2014 Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, separating the Ukrainian coast into two sections: one on the Bight of Odessa in the west and one on the the northwestern side of the Sea of Azov in the east. In February 2022 Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine, beginning a war that continues to the present. Since the end of 2022 Russia has occupied about 20% of Ukraine but a much larger percentage, more thn 80%, of Ukraine's coastline. Russia controls all of Crimea and the Azov Sea coast as well as the western Kherson region south of the Dnipro (Dnieper) River. This page includes lighthouses of the Russian-occupied Sea of Azov coast in the regions of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and eastern Kherson. Under Ukrainian law these regions are defined as "temporarily occupied territories." Russia has established governments in the three regions and admitted them as "federal subjects" (that is, members) of the Russian Federation. Lighthouses in war zones are typically inactive, their lights extinguished for the duration of the war. The descriptions on this page rely on pre-war (Ukrainian) information. Information on possible damage to lighthouses is not available. The Ukrainian word for a lighthouse is mayak (маяк); ostriv (острів) is an island, mys (мис) is a cape, richka (річка) is a river, and havan' (гавань) is a harbor. Lighthouses in non-occupied Ukraine are maintained by Derzhhidrohrafiyu (Держгідрографія), the hydrography and navigation service of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. Russian lighthouses are maintained by the Russian Navy's Office of Navigation and Oceanography. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. UA numbers are the Ukrainian light list numbers as reported by Ukrainian Lighthouses on the Air. Admiralty numbers are from volume N of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 113. The Ukrainian light list, Вогні і знаки Чорного та Азовського морів (Lights and Signs of the Black and Azov Seas), is not available online.
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![]() Old Gate South Mole Light, Port Mariúpol, April 2009 ex-Panoramio photo by -=MNA= |
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses: |
Adjoining pages: East: Russia: Eastern Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov | South: Eastern Crimea | West: Ukraine: Dnipro Basin
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Posted February 19, 2007. Checked and revised September 10, 2025. Lighthouses: 21. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.