Great Stand on the Ugra River
standoff in 1480 between Muscovy and Great Horde
The Great Stand on the Ugra River (Russian: Великое стояние на Угре) or the Standing on the Ugra River, also known as the Battle of the Ugra, was a standoff in 1480 on the banks of the Ugra River between the forces of Akhmat Khan of the Great Horde, and Grand Prince Ivan III of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
After Ivan III stopped paying tribute to the Horde, Akhmat Khan led an army towards Moscow, leading to a standoff between the two armies on the banks of the river. Akhmat Khan waited for his Lithuanian reinforcements to arrive, but they never did, with one Mongol attempt to cross the river failing leading Akhmat Khan to retreat. Both armies departed after little fighting. Nevertheless, the outcome of the campaign corresponded to the strategic plan of the Russians to defend the capital and the border from the Tatars.
In Russian historiography, it has been interpreted as the end of the "Tatar yoke" in Russia, though some historians believe that the event itself was insignificant and did not change Russo-Tatar relations. Nevertheless, the event is usually regarded as the end of nominal Tatar suzerainty over Russia.
This did not end the threat from the Tatars to the Russians. For example, the Tatars under Devlet I Giray managed to burn Moscow in 1571, only to be defeated at the Battle of Molodi later that year.
Background
The main Russian defence line ran along the Oka River from Kaluga east toward Nizhny Novgorod.
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This entry incorporates text from “Great Stand on the Ugra River” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.