The Battle of Geok Tepe in 1881 was the main event in the 1880/81 Russian campaign to conquer the Teke tribe of Turkmens. Its effect was to give the Russian Empire control over most of what is now Turkmenistan, thereby nearly completing the Russian conquest of Central Asia.

Aleksey Nikolayevich Kuropatkin served as the Russian Imperial Minister of War from January 1898 to February 1904 and as a field commander subsequently. Historians often hold him responsible for major Russian defeats in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905, most notably at the Battle of Mukden (1905) and at the Battle of Liaoyang.