Utigurs

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The Utigur Bulgars or Hunno-Bulgars were a Bulgar tribe which in the 5th and 6th centuries are known to have inhabited the steppe north-east of the Black Sea and east the river Don. Earlier they represented the eastern half of Hun Empire and inhabited roughly the same area north of the Caucasus.

The Chronicles of Kiev mention their "Ki" clan establishing Kiev in the early 500s having arrived with the Bulgars. In the mid 6th century, under the descendants of Attila through his son Ernakh, most of the group were conquered by Pseudo-Avars and became known as Kutrigur and they founded Kiev^{[citation needed]} while only the eastern portion retained the Utigur ethnicon. Under Sandilch, they were temporarily coerced by Byzantium into conflicts with their Kutrigurs relatives before the two tribes were united under Kubrat's Great Bulgaria.

After the fall of Kubrat's empire, a part of the Utigurs led by Kubrat’s second son Kotrag, migrated to the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers in what is now Russia (see Volga Bulgaria). Another part of the tribe settled in Syrmia (Pannonia) before moving under the leadership of Kuber to Pelagonia.