It is the easternmost part of Russia and the Asian continent, and is coextensive with the Far Eastern Federal District, which encompasses the area between Lake Baikal and the Pacific Ocean.

The region shares land borders with the countries of Mongolia, China, and North Korea to its south, as well as maritime boundaries with Japan to its southeast, and with the United States along the Bering Strait to its northeast.

In November 2018 Zabaykalsky Krai and the Republic of Buryatia were added; they had previously formed part of the Siberian Federal District.

Russia in the early 1900s persistently sought a warm-water port on the Pacific Ocean for the Imperial Russian Navy as well as to facilitate maritime trade.

The warring parties signed the Treaty of Portsmouth on 5 September 1905, and both Japan and Russia agreed to evacuate Manchuria and to return its sovereignty to China, but Japan was allowed to lease the Liaodong Peninsula (containing Port Arthur and Talien, aka Kwantung Leased Territory), and the Russian rail system in southern Manchuria with its access to strategic resources.

Development of numerous remote locations in the Soviet Far East relied on Gulag labour camps during Stalin's rule, especially in the region's northern half.

The first confrontation occurred in Primorsky Krai, the Battle of Lake Khasan (July–August 1938) involved an attempted military incursion of Japanese-controlled Manchukuo into territory claimed by the Soviet Union.

This incursion was founded in the beliefs of the Japanese side that the Soviet Union had misinterpreted the demarcation of the boundary based on the 1860 Treaty of Peking between Imperial Russia and Manchu China.

Both the Soviet Union and Japan regarded the Primorsky Krai as a strategic location in World War II, and clashes over the territory were common.

The Primorsky Krai served as the Soviet Union's Pacific headquarters in the war to plan an invasion for allied troops of Korea in order to reach Japan.

At the time, the Soviet Union and the United States decided quantitative limits on various nuclear weapons systems and banned the construction of new land-based ICBM launchers.

The population of the Russian Far East has been rapidly declining since the dissolution of the Soviet Union (even more than for Russia in general), dropping by 14% in the last fifteen years.[timeframe?]

Maritime transport is important for delivering supplies to localities near the Pacific and Arctic coasts, and for shipping exports, especially oil, gas and ores.