| 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. Crimea is a peninsula on the north side of the Black Sea, attached to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The territory has a long and complicated history. It was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1783. In the Soviet Union it was at first an autonomous republic and later an oblast (province) within the Russian Federation. In 1954 Crimea was transferred from the Russian Federation to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 Crimea became part of the newly-independent nation of Ukraine. However, Russia continued to occupy several important military bases in the territory including the home port of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol'. In March 2014 Russia invaded and annexed Crimea, leaving the Ukrainian coast in two sections: the Bight of Odessa in the west and 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. The members of the Russian Federation are called federal subjects (sub'yekty federatsii, Субъекты федерации). Sevastopol' was admitted to the Russian Federation as a federal city (gorod federalnogo znacheniya, город федерального значения): the same status held by Moscow and by St. Petersburg. The rest of Crimea was admitted as the Republic of Crimea (Respublika Krym, Республика Крым). The Republic of Crimea is divided into 14 districts (raions, районы) and 11 cities (goroda, города). This page includes lighthouses of eastern Crimea from the Kerch Strait through the city of Yalta. 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 Russian word for a lighthouse is mayak (маяк); ostrov is an island, poluostrov is a peninsula, kosa is a sandy spit, rif is a reef, mys is a cape, bukhta is a bay, zaliv is a larger bay or gulf, proliv is a strait, reka is a river, and gavan' 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. Admiralty numbers are from volume N of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA List numbers are from Publication 113. |
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West Side Kerch Strait Lighthouses
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![]() Nijni Pavlovskiy Light, Arsyncevo Derzhhidrohrafiyu photo |
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![]() Old and new Kamysh-Burunskiy Range Front Lights, Kamysh-Burun Derzhhidrohrafiyu photo |
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![]() Burunsky Range Front Light, Heroevskoe Derzhhidrohrafiyu photo |
South Coast (Black Sea) Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Occupied Ukraine: Sea of Azov | East: Russia: Eastern Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov | West: Occupied Ukraine: Sevastopol'
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Posted February 19, 2007. Checked and revised September 18, 2025. Lighthouses: 31. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.