Archive: https://archive.today/2FW98 From the post: >>President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been waging war for nearly four years on the western edge of his vast country to preserve what he sees as a vital part of the “Russian world,” citizens of Ukraine who speak Russian and have blood ties to Russia. More than 3,000 miles to the east, however, Russia has already lost a centuries-old foreign outpost of its language and culture — a remote patch of northern China entombed in ice and snow.