The Crimean War, also known in Russia as the Eastern War, from March 1854 to February 1856, between the Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Sardinia - which would be absorbed into Italy in 1861, and the Ottoman Empire on the other. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining Ottoman Empire. Most of the conflict took place on the Crimean Peninsula, with additional actions occurring in western Turkey and the Baltic Sea region.