Vladivostok oblast was named either Northern Manchuria, or Upper Manchuria, less than 120 165 years ago.....
I think China may want their warm water port back
Edit: apparently there were Chinese and Russian skirmishes during the Russia-Japanese War of 1910, but China actually ceded control of the area in 1860, so more like less than 165 years ago.
That territory was taken from China by Russia in 1860. The Mongolian Empire had collapsed far before that happened. The Chinese in the region got forcibly relocated in the 1930s, but as of last year they still make up a significant ethnic minority of the region. The Mongols also make up a smaller ethnic minority in the region.
If you're going to go back to The Mongol Empire, then they controlled the vast majority of Asia and the Middle East, not to mention the sizeable chunk of Europe they controlled. I maintain that if The Mongols and The Vikings had ever united that combined empire would still be global. I'm unsure of that would have been better or worse for us in the current era
The Kievan Rus was founded by Viking settlers, therefore by the Putin's own logic he should cede all of Russia east of the Urals to Denmark, Sweden and Norway while he's at it.
And yet Putin has expressed his desire to take some states of the United States, and claim them as property of Russia. How does he justify that? Oh, he wants California? Well, it belongs to America. Before that, the Spanish built their missions upon the Southern parts of it, while Sutter had the North, and before that the native Americans had PARTS of it. Does he want Death Valley in the middle of summer. He’ll have to fight rattlesnakes for it.
Alaska was first settled by Russians so that's the only part he could have a claim, if you forget the fact that the Russian empire sold Alaska to America.