What would Muscovy do then? Well, expand further north. In 1499 Muscovite forces sailed down Pechora river and founded a fort of Pustozersk near the Arctic Ocean coast. To put things into perspective, while Russia was doing this Arctic expansion northward, its southern border lied on Oka river, few miles from Moscow. The bank of Oka was simply called ‘the Bank’ in Russian sources. Service on the Bank was the most hated one by the Russian nobility - hard, dangerous, constant fighting with nomads and not lucrative at all. Expansion to the Arctic wasteland with its harsh climate and terrain was so much easier than expansion southward.
And yet, the real rise of these Arctic territories commenced circa 1500. It was helped by two factors. First of all, in 1552 Russians destroyed Kazan. Kazan lied near the confluence of Volga and Kama rivers thus controlling both the traffic down Volga to the Middle East, and up Kama to the Urals. Kazan merchants monopolised these routes, acting as an intermediary. Moreover, during every Russo-Kazan War which lasted from 1439 to 1552, Kazan would block the traffic for the Russian goods completely. Which means Russian had no access to the Caspian and thus to the Middle East at all, while the route to the Urals was very long, round-shaped and suboptimal.
In 1549 the last real ruler of Kazan - Safa-Giray dies (While early Kazan Khans descended from the rulers of the Golden Horde/Kipchak Khanate, late Kazan Khans were a branch of Girays from Crimea). He was succeeded by his three years old son Utamesh-Giray with his mother Soyembike as the regent