Yermak timofeyevich biography channel

(d. 1585), Cossack chieftain, leader of an expedition that laid the basis for Russia's annexation of Siberia.

Little is known about Yermak's early biography, and many of the details of his Siberian campaign are still disputed.

Most sources indicate that he was a Volga Cossack who fled north in 1581 in order to escape punishment for piracy; Ruslan Skrynnikov, however, argues that Yermak was fighting in the Livonian War in 1581 and went to Siberia in 1582.

Yermak and his Cossack band were hired by the Stroganovs, a family of wealthy Urals merchants, to protect their possessions against attacks by the Tatars and other indigenous peoples of Siberia. Thereafter Yermak and his band of a few hundred men set off along the Siberian rivers in lightweight boats; it is not clear whether the Stroganovs sent them to attack the Siberian khanate, or whether the decision to go on to the offensive was taken by the Cossacks.

In October 1582 they defeated the Siberian khan, Kuchu