Saving the souls of Russia's exiled Lipovans

Babushka Yuliana Mitry can still chant the words to dozens of the ancient songs the Lipovan people brought to Romania's Danube delta as they fled persecution in Russia nearly 300 years ago.

But as her ethnic Russian minority struggles to keep its customs and traditions alive in a globalised world, the 69-year-old grandmother fears that the songs of the Lipovan could one day be lost for good.

Mitry's people left their historic homeland in around 1740, seeking refuge in a far-flung corner of the Danube delta, now a Unesco world heritage site, where they lived through Ottoman domination and a Communist dictatorship.

Also called "old believers", they were facing persecution after refusing to accept the new rituals introduced to the Christian Orthodox Church by the then Russian patriarch, Nikon, according to historian Alexandr Varona.

Nestled between freshwater lakes and the reed-covered marshes, a few kilometres from the Black Sea, Sarichioi is home to one of the oldest Lipovan communities.