After the Russian annexation of Crimea in 1783, Slavic and other settlers occupied the Nogai pastoral land, since the Nogais did not have permanent residence. In the 1770s and 1780s the Russian Empress Catherine the Great resettled approximately 120,000 Nogais from Bessarabia and areas northeast of the Sea of Azov to the Kuban and the Caucasus. In 1790, during the Russo-Turkish war, Prince Grigory Potemkin ordered the resettlement of some Nogai families from the Caucasus (where, he feared, they might defect to the Ottomans) to the north shore of the Sea of Azov.