Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
Russia took control of the Crimea after defeating the Ottoman Empire in the first Russo-Turkish War (1768-1774). Catherine the Great removed the native Crimean Tatars, who were Turkic Muslims, and replaced them with Swiss/German Christians and others. Crimean Tatars fell from a population of 5 million to 300,000. [Furtado: 1001 Days] "Just as important, albeit often overlooked, were the acquisitions made in the south by Catherine the Great. . . . [T]he annexation of the Crimea in 1783, secured by the war of 1787–91, brought the northern coastline of the Black Sea under Russian control; the war of 1807–12 extended it almost to the Danube Delta. The three partitions of Poland of 1772, 1793 and 1795 advanced the frontier of the Russian Empire more than 300 miles (500 km) to the west." [Blanning: Pursuit of Glory, p. 104]