For over three centuries, the military of the Crimean Khanate and the Nogai Horde conducted slave raids primarily in lands controlled by Russia and Poland-Lithuania as well as other territories. Their main purpose was the capture of slaves, most of whom were exported to the Ottoman slave markets in Constantinople or elsewhere in the Middle East. Genoese and Venetians merchants controlled the slave trade from Crimea to Western Europe. The raids were a drain of the human and economic resources of eastern Europe. They largely inhabited the "Wild Fields" – the steppe and forest-steppe land which extends from a hundred or so miles south of Moscow to the Black Sea and which now contains most of the Russian and Ukrainian population. The campaigns also played an important role in the development o