Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vladimir-Suzdal, also called Suzdalia or before 1157 the Principality of Suzdal, was a medieval principality established during the disintegration of Kievan Rus. Its territory is commonly known in historiography as northeast Russia or northeast Rus.
Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked Kiev in 1169, which shifted political power to the northeast. His father Yury Dolgoruky had earlier built up the principality's military strength, conquering the Ryazan Principality in the Suzdal-Ryazan war of 1146 and occupying Kiev in the 1150s.
Yury Dolgoruky, the sixth son of Vladimir Monomakh, moved his capital from Rostov to Suzdal in 1125 and ruled a virtually independent principality. His sobriquet, the Long-Armed, alluded to his reach into the politics of Kiev, and chronicle or legend credits him with founding towns including Moscow, Tver, and Pereslavl.
The Mongol hordes under Batu Khan took and burned Vladimir in 1238 and devastated its other major cities. Yury II was killed during the Mongol invasions of 1237 to 1238, and his brother Yaroslav II and the other princes submitted to Mongol rule.
From 1331 the prince of Moscow was also grand prince of Vladimir, except for a break from 1359 to 1363. In 1389 the grand principality became a family possession of the prince of Moscow, uniting the two thrones, and from 1394 Moscow controlled Vladimir.
Vladimir-Suzdal produced white stone cathedrals blending Byzantine and Roman traditions, including the Church of Pokrova na Nerli. Early Muscovite architecture inherited its whitestone construction and four-pillar cathedral typology, and the principality's original territory became the core of the centralized Russian state.