Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus'

The Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' began with a first raid by a Mongol reconnaissance force, which defeated the princes of the Rus' and the Cumans at the Kalka River. The main invasion came in the late 1230s under Batu Khan, a grandson of Genghis Khan, whose armies destroyed cities one after another, including Ryazan, Vladimir and Moscow, before turning to the south. In December 1240 they stormed and sacked Kyiv, the old centre of the Rus' lands, and then went on to attack Poland and Hungary. The Rus' princes became tributaries of the Golden Horde, the Mongol khanate based on the Volga, a dependence that lasted for over two centuries. Historians debate the lasting effects of the so-called Mongol yoke.

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