Russia has the world’s largest land area.
Russia extends across eastern Europe and northern Asia, spanning eleven time zones. Its territory reaches from the Baltic and Black Sea regions to the Pacific Ocean and from Arctic coastlines to the Caucasus and Central Asian borders. The country’s enormous east-west extent gives it exceptional geographic and climatic diversity.
Russia covers about 17.1 million square kilometers, making it larger than Canada, the second-largest country by total area. Much of the country consists of forests, tundra, mountains, grasslands, and permafrost regions. Lake Baikal in southern Siberia is the world’s deepest freshwater lake by depth and contains a large share of the planet’s unfrozen surface freshwater.
Area rankings can vary slightly depending on whether sources compare land area alone or total area including inland water. Russia remains first under either common measurement. China and the United States are also among the largest countries, but neither exceeds Russia’s total extent.