The 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict was a series of armed clashes between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, occurring at the height of the Sino-Soviet split during the 1960s. A small island on the Ussuri River, covering an area of 0.74 km²—known as Zhenbao Island in Chinese and Damansky Island (Остров Даманский) in Russian—nearly brought the Soviet Union and China to the brink of war in 1969.