Ottoman Greeks or Romioi were ethnic Greeks who lived in the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922), a large part of which is in modern Turkey, Greece and the rest of the Balkans. Ottoman Greeks were Greek Orthodox Christians who belonged to the Rum Millet. They were concentrated in Ottoman Greece, Thrace and other parts of the Ottoman Balkans, Anatolia and Ottoman Cyprus. There were also sizeable Greek communities elsewhere in the Ottoman Armenia, Ottoman Syria and the Ottoman Caucasus, including in what, between 1878 and 1917, made up the Russian Caucasus province of Kars Oblast, in which Pontic Greeks, northeastern Anatolian Greeks, and Caucasus Greeks who had collaborated with the Russian Imperial Army in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829 were settled in over 70 villages, as part of official Russian policy to re-populate with Orthodox Christians an area that was traditionally made up of Ottoman Muslims and Armenians.