The Khazar empire controlled a very vast territory in the 8th century, stretching from southern Russia and Crimea to part of Ukraine and Georgia. It would have been, according to its author, the Bulgarian historian Tsvetelin Stepanov, an empire almost as powerful as those of its Byzantine or Islamic neighbors.
A very interesting reminder to underline, in our time of war in Ukraine, that an empire is not necessarily a factor of war even if the idea of empire is always associated with that of conquest.