The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Urmia (Русская духовная миссия в Урмии) or Orthodox Mission in Urmia (Урмийская духовная миссия) was a Russian Orthodox mission to the ethnic Assyrians who lived in the border regions with Russia, mainly in the Persian Azerbaijan province, and who converted from the Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholic Church in 1898. Formally, the mission covers only twenty years (1898–1918), but Russian interest in the region prior to its establishment lasted almost the entire 19th century.[1]