Short answers, pulled from the story.
Kuban is a historical and geographical region in the North Caucasus of southern Russia, surrounding the Kuban River on the Black Sea. It is bounded by the Don Steppe, the Volga Delta, and the Kerch Strait to the west, which separates it from the Crimean Peninsula. Krasnodar Krai is commonly referred to as Kuban, though the term also encompasses Adygea, Karachay-Cherkessia, and parts of Stavropol Krai.
The Kuban region was settled by Cossacks beginning in earnest between 1792 and 1794, when the Russian government resettled the Black Sea Cossack Host and Don Cossacks to the area. The Black Sea Cossack Host had been created in 1787 from former Zaporozhian Cossacks in southern Ukraine. Settlement continued gradually for over a century.
Russia began building fortifications along the Kuban River in the 1770s to block Ottoman ambitions to use the region as a corridor for recovering Crimea. After Russia annexed Crimea, right-bank Kuban, and Taman in 1783, the Kuban River became the southern border of the Russian Empire, and new fortresses were built through the 1780s and 1790s.
In the mid-18th century, the Adyghe tribes were the predominant inhabitants of the Kuban region. The Lesser Nogai Horde also held territory in Kuban and was allied with the Crimean Khanate. After the Russo-Turkish War of 1768-1774, the area began shifting toward pro-Russian tendencies.
During the second half of the 19th century, the Kuban territory was divided into Kuban Oblast and Black Sea Okrug, with the latter later becoming Black Sea Governorate. The administrative structure blended civil and military government elements, reflecting the region's origins as a militarized frontier zone.
Kuban is known by distinct names in several languages: Кубань in Russian, Пшызэ in Adyghe, Псыжь in Kabardian, and Къобан, Кобан, and Къвбина in other regional languages. These different names reflect the multiple peoples who have inhabited or maintained connections to the region across its history.