Ananiv

Ananiv lies on the Tyligul River in the steppe between the Dniester and the Southern Bug. It first appears in documents in 1767 as the sloboda of Anani, whose name is associated with an early settler, the Zaporozhian Cossack Ananii. Some accounts place the settlement's beginnings earlier in the century. The river valley formed part of a frontier where Cossack, Nogai and Ottoman spheres met before the Russian Empire expanded across the region.