Russia
Russia (Russian: Россия, Rossíya), officially the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация (help · info); or Russian Federation, is a country located in northern Eurasia. With 17,075,400 square kilometers, Russia is the country with the largest area of the planet, covering more than a ninth of the land area. It is also the ninth most populous country with 142 million inhabitants. It borders the following countries, from northwest to southeast: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both through the exclave of Kaliningrad), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan, the Sea of Okhotsk, and the United States, through the Bering Strait. Russian history begins with the Eastern Slavs, who emerged as an ethnic group recognized in Europe between the third and eighth centuries.