Kazakh Steppe in the context of "Western Turkestan"

The Pontic–Caspian Steppe is a steppe extending across Eastern Europe to Central Asia, formed by the Caspian and Pontic steppes. It stretches from the northern shores of the Black Sea (the Pontus Euxinus of antiquity) to the northern area around the Caspian Sea, where it ends at the Ural-Caspian narrowing, which joins it with the Kazakh Steppe in Central Asia, making it a part of the larger Eurasian Steppe. Geopolitically, the Pontic–Caspian Steppe extends from northeastern Bulgaria and southeastern Romania through Moldova, southern and eastern Ukraine, through the North Caucasus of southern Russia, and into the Lower Volga region where it straddles the border of southern Russia and western Kazakhstan. Biogeographically, it is a part of the Palearctic realm, and of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome.

The area corresponds to Cimmeria, Scythia, and Sarmatia of classical antiquity. Across several millennia, numerous tribes of nomadic horsemen used the steppe; many of them went on to conquer lands in the settled regions of Central and Eastern Europe, West Asia, and South Asia.

Russian Turkestan was the vast region of Central Asia governed by the Russian Empire, often described by historians as a colonial possession. It was formally organized as the Turkestan Governorate-General in 1867, and was also known as the Turkestan Krai from 1886 onward. For administrative and military purposes, its territory was managed as the Turkestan Military District.

It comprised the oasis regions south of the Kazakh Steppe but excluded the Russian protectorates of the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva. While these states retained internal autonomy, their independence was largely nominal, as Russia controlled their foreign relations and military affairs. The population consisted primarily of speakers of Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Tajik, with a significant Russian settler minority.

The Baikonur Cosmodrome is a spaceport operated by Russia within Kazakhstan. Located in the Kazakh city of Baikonur, it is the largest operational space launch facility in terms of area. All Russian crewed spaceflights are launched from Baikonur.

Situated in the Kazakh Steppe, some 90 metres (300 ft) above sea level, it is 200 kilometres (120 mi) to the east of the Aral Sea and north of the Syr Darya. It is close to Töretam, a station on the Trans-Aral Railway. Russia, as the official successor state to the Soviet Union, has retained control over the facility since 1991; it originally assumed this role through the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), but ratified an agreement with Kazakhstan in 2005 that allowed it to lease the spaceport until 2050. It is jointly managed by Roscosmos and the Russian Aerospace Forces.

The Steppe Governorate-General (Russian: Степное генерал-губернаторство, romanized: Stepnoye general-gubernatorstvo), also known as the Steppe Krai was a Governorate-General of the Russian Empire located in the colonized territory the Kazakh Steppe and Western Siberia, covering the modern Kazakhstan, as well as parts of Kyrgyzstan and Russia. It consisted of four or five oblasts: Akmolinsk, Semipalatinsk, Turgay, and Ural oblasts, and from 1882 to 1899 Semirechye Oblast, having the total area of 2,240,000 square kilometres (860,000 sq mi) and the total population of 3,454,000 (both including Semirechensk) in 1897. Omsk was the capital.