Rus Air Force buying MOST ADVANCED Aircraft challenge US Military & NATO Power
Russia (Listeni/ˈrʌʃə/;
Russian:
Росси́я, tr.
Rossiya;
IPA: [rɐˈsʲijə] ( listen)), also officially known as the
Russian Federation[11] (Russian:
Росси́йская Федера́ция, tr.
Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: [rɐˈsʲijskəjə fʲɪdʲɪˈratsɨjə] ( listen)), is a sovereign state in northern
Eurasia.[12] It is a federal semi-presidential republic.
At 17,125,
200 square kilometres (6,612,
100 sq mi),[13] Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than one-eighth of the
Earth's inhabited land area.[14][15][16] Russia is the world's ninth most populous country with over
144 million people at the end of
2015.[5][6]
Extending across the entirety of northern
Asia and much of
Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with
Norway,
Finland,
Estonia,
Latvia,
Lithuania and
Poland (both with
Kaliningrad Oblast),
Belarus,
Ukraine,
Georgia,
Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan,
China,
Mongolia, and
North Korea. It shares maritime borders with
Japan by the
Sea of Okhotsk and the
U.S. state of
Alaska across the
Bering Strait.
The nation's history began with that of the
East Slavs, who emerged as a recognizable group in
Europe between the 3rd and
8th centuries AD.[17] Founded
and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, the medieval state of
Rus arose in the
9th century. In 988 it adopted
Orthodox Christianity from the
Byzantine Empire,[18] beginning the synthesis of
Byzantine and
Slavic cultures that defined
Russian culture for the next millennium.[18] Rus' ultimately disintegrated into a number of smaller states; most of the Rus' lands were overrun by the
Mongol invasion and became tributaries of the nomadic
Golden Horde in the
13th century.[19]
The Grand Duchy of Moscow gradually reunified the surrounding
Russian principalities, achieved independence from the Golden Horde, and came to dominate the cultural and political legacy of
Kievan Rus'. By the
18th century, the nation had greatly expanded through conquest, annexation, and exploration to become the
Russian Empire, which was the third largest empire in history, stretching from Poland in Europe to Alaska in
North America.[20][21]
Following the
Russian Revolution, the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic became the largest and leading constituent of the
Soviet Union abbreviated to
USSR, the world's first constitutionally socialist state and a recognized world superpower, and a rival to the
United States[22] which played a decisive role in the
Allied victory in
World War II.[23][24]
The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the
20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, and the first man in space. By the end of
1990, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest economy, largest standing military in the world and the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction(nuclear threat obliged the state to detonate
Tsar Bomba, which was mankind's most powerful nuclear bomb ever built.[25][26][27] Following the partition of the Soviet Union in
1991, fourteen independent republics emerged from the USSR; as the largest, most populous, and most economically developed republic, the
Russian SFSR reconstituted itself as the Russian Federation and is recognized as the continuing legal personality (the sole successor state) of the Soviet Union.[28]
The Russian economy ranks as the tenth largest by nominal
GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015.[29] Russia's extensive mineral and energy resources, the largest reserves in the world,[30] have made it one of the largest producers of oil and natural gas globally.[31][32]
The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction.[33] Russia was the world's second biggest exporter of major arms in 2010-14, according to
SIPRI data.[34]
Russia is a great power and a permanent member of the
United Nations Security Council, a member of the
G20, the
Council of Europe, the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (
APEC), the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (
SCO), the
Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe (
OSCE), and the
World Trade Organization (
WTO), as well as being the leading member of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (
CIS), the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (
CSTO) and one of the 5 members of the
Eurasian Economic Union (
EEU), along with
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and
Kyrgyzstan.