Forums are the best way to get help in researching your family tree and searching for family living in Russia and Ukraine. It is amazing by how helpful people can be on forums.
Here are the best forums I have found. Suggestions for additions to this list can be made in the comments section.
Last updated on June 11, 2019
English-language forums
1. Russian genealogy forum on Genealogy.com (inactive but worth reviewing the posts)
2.Ukrainian genealogy forum on Genealogy.com (inactive but worth reviewing the posts)
3. Russian genealogy forum on ancestry.com
4. Ukrainian genealogy forums on ancestry.com
It is highly recommended to post in Russian or Ukrainian on these forums. English is frowned upon in many Russian-language and Ukrainian-language forums.
Please download Google Translate to get around these sites more easily. Then use Google Translate or Promt to post messages on the forums. These forums are free but still require registration.
1. All Russia Family Tree– The best and most widely used forum for genealogy in the former USSR and finding relatives of ancestors or missing family from the former USSR. (A guide on using this forum without knowing Russian, including a video guide, is posted here.)
2. Ukrainian Genealogical Forum
3. Rusgenealogy.clan.su– A great forum that provides helpful information on getting documents from various archives.
4. Analizfamilii.ru (inactive but worth reviewing the posts)
5. Union Revival Pedigree Traditions
6. Ufagen.ru
8. Smolbattle– covers Kaluga Province, Novgorod Province, Belarus, Siberia and Trans-Urals and Tver Province.
10. Geneo– This form covers the former USSR and other nearby European countries.
11. Tree of Life Genealogy Forum
12. Center for Genealogical Research Forum
13. Forum of Ukrainian Heraldry Society
Russian-Jewish Ancestry
Volga German Ancestry
Kursk, Russia
Our City Kursk (inactive but worth reviewing the posts)
Novocherkassk, Russia
Novocherkassk.net– This forum has a great section for history and an active thread for genealogy.
Saratov, Russia
Vyatka, Russia
Yaroslavl, Russia
Yaroslavl State Historical and Architectural Museum Preserve– This forum is open to posts about ancestry and relative searches in all areas of Russia.
Read these two posts to learn how to take full advantage of these forums:
Find Lost Russian & Ukrainian Family 
Hello. Do you know if there is a dedicated website helping Russians find Australian family? Thankyou.
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Maybe these will be helpful- http://vk.com/russianaustralia, http://forum.vgd.ru/1457/. There are a bunch of Australian groups on vk.com that could be open to family searches. There isn’t much for Russian-Australian genealogy. Sorry.
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Dear Vera, I tried the Genealogy forum on Ukraine.com. It’s a very strange forum. The registration has been disabled. I tried a few searches, and only the most common keywords brought some search results, e.g., Kyiv.
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I learned about the disabled registration after my update. I have some ideas why that happened. If registration is disabled, I won’t be surprised if the forum is deleted soon. A lot of people have been helped on that forum. Search through Google by keyword site: https://www.ukraine.com/forums/forum/personals/genealogy
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I find the Cyrillic alphabet overwhelmingly difficult. How can I get help?
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Cyrillic is challenging for me, too. I am hardly fluent in Russian. I use the Google Translate web browser app on my laptop computer every day. You can also translate English to Russian or Ukrainian here- https://translate.google.com/ Here is a post to help you with Google Translate- https://lostrussianfamily.wordpress.com/2020/01/11/expert-guide-to-using-google-translate-in-russian-and-ukrainian-genealogy/ Vera
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Thank you. But, don’t I, at least, have to know what is written before I can translate it, or do I just enter an entire page into the Google Translate app?
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You can use the camera on your phone to translate text but I would do paragraph by paragraph. You can retype Russian typed text here https://russian.typeit.org/ and then copy and paste the text into Google Translate for English.
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