The Kremlin responded by sending troops to Ukraine's Russian-speaking peninsula of Crimea and annexing it as part of Russia last month.
By the end of the four-year war it had also defeated Peru, which had allied with Bolivia, annexing its departments of Arica and Tacna (see map).
It has reinforced its defences by annexing other services that help find things, for instance by buying ITA Software, a firm that provides flight data and other travel information.Search engines and siege enginesIt will not be easy to wrest this profitable property from Google.
Fighting is their raison d'être.Russia is probably not interested in annexing the Donbas, an unattractive coal region in the south-east of Ukraine that would land it with responsibilities but no obvious benefits.
(After annexing Crimea last year it cut off methadone patients' supplies; some reportedly died after turning back to heroin or committing suicide).
Russia responded by swiftly annexing Crimea (where it still had a significant naval base) and stoking a separatist war in Ukraine's east.
When the same point is made by the foreign minister of a nuclear power which is in the process of annexing a piece of territory, it will probably get a bit more attention.
Tub-thumping over Dokdo cuts across party lines.Japan has often displayed a tin ear to South Korean sensitivities over the island, which it calls Takeshima, having acquired it in the process of annexing Korea.
On current projections London's population will swell from just under 8m now to over 9m by 2031, which is roughly the equivalent of annexing Britain's second city, Birmingham.
That is the justification it gave for annexing the western half of the island of New Guinea in 1963, even though its inhabitants are Melanesian not Malay, animists and Christians, not Muslims.
After the 1967 war, Israel reunited the city, annexing its eastern part.
