Russia Country Info - Europe

Description and Basic Information

Russia with its capital Moscow is located in Europe (Northern Asia (the area west of the Urals is considered part of Europe), bordering the Arctic Ocean). It covers some 17,100,001 square kilometres (approximately 1.8 times the size of the US) with 140,702,000 citizens. Russian is the language used by the people in Russia. Georgia, China, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Mongolia, Norway, Azerbaijan and North Korea are bordering countries.

Russiaofficially known as the Russian Federation — is the world's largest country, spanning Eastern Europe, and northern Asia, sharing land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine to the west , Georgia (including the disputed regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and Azerbaijan to the southwest, and Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, North Korea to the east and much of the south. Russia is immense, and extraordinarily long on attractions for visitors, although many lie in the hard-to-reach stretches of the planet's most remote lands. The best known sights are in and around the nation's principal cities of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Russia's history is the number one reason why tourists come to this country, following the draw of its fascinating, sometimes surreal, oftentimes brutal, and always consequential national saga.

Pictures from Capital (Moscow)

Photos provided by Panoramio are under the copyright of their owners.

About Russia

The landscape featuresbroad plain with low hills west of Urals with vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia and uplands and mountains along southern border regions. The average density of population is about 8 per km². The climate in Russia can be described as ranges from steppes in the south through humid continental in much of European Russia with subarctic in Siberia to tundra climate in the polar north, winters vary from cool along Black Sea coast to frigid in Siberia, summers vary from warm in the steppes to cool along Arctic coast. Potential threats by nature are permafrost over much of Siberia being a major impediment to development or volcanic activity in the Kuril Islands, volcanoes and earthquakes on the Kamchatka Peninsula or spring floods and summer/autumn forest fires throughout Siberia and parts of European Russia.

To reach someone in Russia dial +7 prior to a number. There are 44,802,000 installed telephones. And there are 230,500,000 registered mobile phones. The cellular networks operate on frequencies of 900, 1800 Mhz. Websites typically end with the top level domain ".ru". If you want to bring electric appliances (e.g. battery charger), keep in mind the local 220V - 50Hz. The following list are the 83 regions/states in Russia we know off.

Demographic Statistics

In the year 2010, the total Russian population shrinked at a rate of -0.47% (or by 648,164 citizens). With 2,235,819 deaths and 1,548,625 babies born, the natural increase rate lies at -0.49%. 39,029 persons more in total immigrated to the country than emmigrated.

An overview of age distribution in Russia: Each pair of bars represents a single age group (male/female). Each group is spanning 5 years. E.g. 0 to 5 years, 5 to 10 etc. and group "0 to 5" being at the left end and "100 +" at the right end of the chart.

Based on content from wikitravel.org. The original article can be found here based on the work of these users.
Geographic information is based on the data provided by geonames.org, CIA factsbook and Unesco.