Russia is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Asia and Europe . With an area of 17,075,400 km², Russia is the largest country in the world, covering almost twice the territory of the next-largest country, Canada , and has significant mineral and energy resources. Russia has the world's eighth-largest population. Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway , Finland , Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , Poland , Belarus , Ukraine , Georgia , Azerbaijan , Kazakhstan , China , Mongolia , and North Korea . It is also close to the United States , Sweden , and Japan across relatively small stretches of water (the Bering Strait , the Baltic Sea , and La Pérouse Strait, respectively).

Formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), a republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Russia is now the Federation of Russia since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991. After the Soviet era, the area, population, and industrial production of the Soviet Union (then one of the world's two Cold War superpowers) that were located in Russia passed on to the Russian Federation.