Russia has the world’s largest land area, covering more than 17 million square kilometres. The country stretches across eastern Europe and northern Asia, spanning eleven time zones from the Baltic region to the Pacific Ocean.
Russia’s enormous territory includes tundra, taiga, forests, grasslands, mountains, and extensive Arctic coastlines. The Ural Mountains are conventionally used as part of the boundary between European and Asian Russia, although the country is politically one state spanning both continental regions.
Russia’s size is closely tied to centuries of eastward expansion by the Russian state, including movement across Siberia and toward the Pacific. The Russian Empire reached the Pacific coast by the seventeenth century and later sold Alaska to the United States in 1867, reducing the country’s territory in North America.
Canada is the second-largest country by total area, while China and the United States are also among the largest. Rankings can vary slightly when sources compare total area, which includes inland water, with land area alone, but Russia remains first under either common measure.