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Russia (Russian: Росси́я, Rossiya; pronounced ), also the Russian Federation (Росси́йская Федера́ция, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; , listen (help·info)), is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of Eurasia. 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 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 and Japan across relatively small stretches of water (the Bering Strait and La Pérouse Strait, respectively).

Formerly the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), the 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 was located in Russia passed on to the Russian Federation.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia's global role was greatly diminished, although the nation still remains influential. Because Russia is considered the Soviet Union's successor state in diplomatic matters (see Russia's membership in the United Nations) it is one of five states with permanent membership on the United Nations Security Council and veto power. It is also one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and possesses the world's largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. Russia is also leader of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the group of former Soviet republics, as well as Quartet, one of the six parties in the six-party talks, one of two leaders in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and a G8 member.

In October 2005, the federal statistics agency reported that Russia's population has shrunk by more than half a million people dipping to 143 million, although Russia became the second-country in the world by the number of immigrants from abroad.

History

Read more at Wikipedia.org