Crimean War (1853–1856), a series of conflicts between the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, France, Sardinia and the Russian Empire, including an Allied invasion of the Crimean Peninsula. Japanese invasion of Sakhalin (1905), an invasion and annexation by the Japanese, as part of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Eastern Front (World War I) (1914–1918), Russia was forced to cede Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states to Germany as the Russian Empire collapsed.