Russia (Russian: Россия) is the largest country in the world, covering over 17,125,191 km² (6,612,073 sq mi),encompassing more than one-eighth of Earth's inhabited land area (excludes Antarctica). Russia extends across eleven time zones, and has the most borders of any country in the world, with sixteen sovereign nations.

Russia is a transcontinental country, stretching vastly over two continents, Europe and Asia. It spans the northernmost edge of Eurasia, and has the world's fourth-longest coastline, at 37,653 km (23,396 mi). Russia, alongside Canada and the United States, is one of only three countries with a coast along three oceans (however connection to the Atlantic Ocean is extremely remote), due to which it has links with over thirteen marginal seas. It lies between latitudes 41° and 82° N, and longitudes 19° E and 169° W. Russia is larger than three continents of the world and has about the same surface area as Pluto. Russia encompasses, by far, the largest forest area of any country in the world.

Kaliningrad Oblast, westernmost part of Russia along the Baltic Sea, is about 9,000 km (5,600 mi) apart from its easternmost part, Big Diomede Island in the Bering Strait. From north to south, the country ranges from the northern tip of the Russian Arctic islands at Franz Josef Land to the southern tip of the Republic of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea, spanning about 4,500 kilometres (2,800 mi) of extremely varied, often inhospitable terrain.

Extending for 57,792 kilometres (35,910 mi), the Russian border is the world's longest. Along the 20,139-kilometre (12,514 mi) land frontier, Russia has boundaries with 14 countries: Poland and Lithuania (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea.

Approximately two-thirds of the frontier is bounded by seawater. Virtually all of the lengthy northern coast is well above the Arctic Circle; except for the port of Murmansk—which receives currents that are somewhat warmer than would be expected at that latitude, due to the effects of the Gulf Stream—that coast is locked in ice much of the year. Thirteen seas and parts of two oceans—the Arctic and Pacific—wash Russian shores. It is separated by close sea, making it a maritime boundary. It also shares one with Japan.

With a few changes of status, most of the Soviet Union's administrative and territorial divisions of the Russian Republic were retained in constituting the Russian Federation. As of 2014, there were eighty-five administrative territorial divisions (called federal subjects): twenty-two republics, nine krais (territories), forty-six oblasts (provinces), one autonomous oblast, four autonomous okrugs, and three cities with federal status, namely the cities of Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Sevastopol.

The republics include a wide variety of peoples, including northern Europeans, Tatars, Caucasus peoples, and indigenous Siberians. The largest federal subjects are in Siberia. Located in east-central Siberia, the Sakha Republic (Yakutia) is the largest federal subject in the country (and the largest country subdivision in the world), twice the size of Alaska. Second in size is Krasnoyarsk Krai, located west of Sakha in Siberia. Kaliningrad Oblast, which is a noncontiguous constituent entity of Russia, is the smallest oblast. This is both the smallest republic and the smallest federal subject of Russia except for the three federal cities. The two most populous federal subjects, Moscow Oblast (with Moscow) and Krasnodar Krai, are in European Russia.

Russia had a population of 141.18 million according to the 2010 census, which rose to 146.2 million as of 2021 following the annexation of Crimea in 2014.^{[non-primary source needed]} It is the most populous country in Europe, and the ninth-most populous country in the world; with a population density of 9 inhabitants per square kilometre (23 inhabitants/sq mi).