How to upload an existing project to git?

Question

git

There is a local project, I decided to upload it to bitbucket. I created a repository, set it up as it should. Now the question is how to link the existing folder with the project to the repository? I read in the manuals (maybe I don’t understand it right) that you need to create exactly an empty folder with the project, then an empty repository, and clone the repository into this empty folder. This will establish a connection, and then drop the files from the project folder into this empty folder. Is this really how it's done? Or maybe there is a way to immediately take and link the project folder to the repository, and not deal with these copy-pastes?