population. In the Ukrainian census of 2010, just under 60 percent of Ukraine's Karaite population - 715 individuals - lived in Crimea, representing around 30 percent of the global population at the time. However, between the Russian invasion of 2014 and the Russian census of 2021, the population dropped to 295, a fall of almost 60 percent. The war of 2022 may have caused further disruption. This means that the Crimean population is no longer the largest, and is almost certainly smaller than the populations of mainland Ukraine, Poland, and Israel. Ukraine Outside Crimea, Karaites historically settled in Galicia, particularly in Halych and Lutsk. However, there is only one Karaite left in Halych today, and the kenesa was shut down in 1959 and eventually demolished. The Galician community had its own dialect of Karaim. The largest contemporary Karaite community is in Kiev; smaller ones exist in other cities, including Kharkiv, which has a functioning kenesa, although the community numbers only about two dozen. In the 2010 census, 481 Ukrainians identified as Karaites outside of Crimea. In 2021, the Ukrainian government unveiled a bill planned to grant Crimean Karaites and other minority groups official 'indigenous' status. Poland In 2011, 346 people in Poland identified as Karaites. Russia Outside Crimea, there are 205 self-identifying Karaites as of 2021, nearly all of whom speak Russian as a first language. There are no significant concentrations; the largest community numbers over 60 people in Moscow. Kazakhstan In 2009, 231 people in Kazakhstan identified as Karaites. This was an unusual jump from the 28 Karaites recorded in 1999. Religion Until the 20th century, Karaite Judaism was the only religion of the Karaim, During the Russian Civil War a significant number of Karaim emigrated to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary and then France and Germany. Most of them converted to Christianity. The Karaim's modern national movement philanthropist M.S. Sarach was one of them. The Crimean Karaites' emancipation in the Russian Empire caused cultural assimilation followed by secularization. This process continued in the USSR when most of the kenesas were closed. In 1928 secular Karaim philologist Seraya Shapshal was elected as Hacham of Polish and Lithuanian Karaim. Being a strong adopter of Russian orientalist V. Grigorjev's theory about the Khazarian origin of the Crimean Karaites, Shapshal developed the Karaim's religion and "historical dejudaization" doctrine. In the mid 1930s, he began to create a theory describing the Altai-Turkic origin