Yeah I am talking about the og Crimean War in the 1850s. The entire thing had a big alliance of Britain, France, Sardinia-Piedmont (proto-Italy) and the Ottomans they were backing against Russia (the war started as just Ottos vs. Russia, but they escalated with the others joining later) as a way to hold the post-Napoleonic Concert of Europe balance of power because allowing Russia to win would make them too strong.
It also goes back ever further when you look into all of it. Europe has been spooked by Russia ever since the late 17th century when the Commonwealth (Poland-Lithuania) started to collapse into itself and the Russians expanded. Russia came out of the Napoleonic Wars pretty well all things considered, and it became a honest power in the region. Right after the end of the Napoleonic Wars Britain and Russia would end up butting heads over Asia and their spheres of influence there as the Brits took control from the sea while the Russians took control from the land. They butted heads over India, Persia/Iran, Tibet, the Khazaks, Uzbeks, Tajiks and of course Afghanistan.
There is also the angle of Russo-German relations, and the European influence on it. The two have a history which is mostly cold but has spots where they are friendly and those are always worrisome to anyone around the both of them as matching these two entities results in a fearsome alliance. During the 19th century there were actually several periods of the alliances shifting from Russia as bad to good and good to bad in Britain. In fact, by the time of the 1st World War Anglo-German relations had been slowly warming up from the damage that happened from the competition between them over navy sizes as the both of them were starting to get worried about Russia getting too powerful.
One can argue that the current war over Ukraine is nothing more than the latest chapter in almost 300 years of Russo-European relations where Moscow tries and project their power into Europe and seize the east for themselves. Britain surely seem to think so, given they parallels between Boris Johnson flying to Kiev to stop peace talks at the start of the war and keep it going and the British in 1853 telling the Sultan to reject the Russian treaty proposal which made the war inevitable.
