Vladivostok

Vladivostok is the largest city and administrative center of Primorsky Krai and capital of the Far Eastern Federal District of Russia, on the Golden Horn Bay along the Sea of Japan, with a population of 603,519 as of 2021; it is the second largest city in the Russian Far East after Khabarovsk, about 45 kilometers from the border with China and 134 kilometers from North Korea. Historically part of Outer Manchuria, it was founded as a Russian military outpost on 2 July 1860 following the Treaty of Aigun between Qing China and the Russian Empire, and its growth accelerated after 1872, when it became the main Russian naval base on the Pacific; by 1914 its population exceeded 100,000 and included large Asian communities alongside its ethnically diverse Russian majority. The city was occupied by White Russian and Allied forces after the 1917 revolution, with Japanese troops remaining until 1922, when the Red Army absorbed the Far Eastern Republic into Soviet Russia. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 Vladivostok has remained Russia's largest port on the Pacific Ocean and the chief cultural, economic, scientific and tourism hub of the Russian Far East, serving as the terminus of the Trans-Siberian Railway, headquarters of the Pacific Fleet of the Russian Navy, and host of the annual Eastern Economic Forum.