Russian claims on the Steppes

Immediately after the fall of Astrakhan, in the year 1557, Ivan IV launched a campaign in the steppes south of Kazan, the realm of the Nogaï Horde, heirs of some Mongol people. This was the first stepping stone for the expansion eastward. The Russian expansion eastward, led between 1560 and 1581 by Cossacks under Yermak and the private venture of the Stroganov merchants of Nizhny-Novgorod had seen much land fall under control of the Russian Czar. The conquest of the Khanate of Sibir in 1584 and the destruction of the last realm of Genghis Khan's heirs in Siberia was the last step before the exploration and control of the vast hinterland, that would eventually see the Cossacks build cities out of their Ostrogs (simple fortifications to ensure transit) and reach the Pacific Ocean at Okhotsk in 1645.