Russian conquest of Siberia

The Russian conquest of Siberia was the long expansion of Russian power across northern Asia between 1581 and 1778, which began with the campaign of the Cossack leader Yermak Timofeyevich against the Khanate of Sibir. The khanate was a loose structure of vassalages, and Russian explorers undermined it by pressing the family-based tribes to change their loyalties and by building distant forts from which raiding parties operated. Although outnumbered, the Russians prevailed, and the annexation of Siberia and the Far East was resisted by local peoples and set against fierce fighting between indigenous Siberians and Russian Cossacks, who often committed atrocities. The conquest was largely a spontaneous undertaking by groups of adventurers, and it is counted among the early European colonial campaigns.