Where is RUSSIA located on the map?
Russia is a country of Eastern Europe and North Asia. In Russian the name of the country is Rossija.
Russia is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean (Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea, Chukchi Sea); in the east, by the Pacific Ocean via the Bering Strait (which separates Russia from Alaska), the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan; to the south, by North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Black Sea; to the west, by Ukraine, Byelorussia, Latvia, Estonia, the Baltic Sea (Gulf of Finland), Finland and Norway. Russia has the Kaliningrad enclave, located between Lithuania and Poland, and a number of islands in the Arctic Ocean (Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlia, Severnaya Zemlia, New Siberian Archipelago) Wrangel Island), and in the Pacific Ocean (Kuril Islands, Sakhalin Island).
The Russian Federation is a federal republic comprising 21 republics (including Tataria and Chechnya), 6 territories (krai), 49 regions (oblast), 10 autonomous districts (avtonomnyi okroug), the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan (on the Love, in the Far East) and two cities of federal status, Moscow and St. Petersburg. Some borders are contested (Crimea, Kuril Islands) while the rise of regionalisms since the end of the USSR threatens the internal cohesion of the country.
Russia can be divided into four major geographical regions: European Russia, west of the Urals, western Siberia, eastern Siberia and the Russian Far East. The general relief consists of vast plains and plateaus, bordered on the south and east by a discontinuous belt of high peripheral mountains. Immensity and general flatness give the landscapes a strongly monotonous character.
Where is the country of RUSSIA situated?
European Russia (Western Russia) is a vast plain with an average altitude of about 180 m. There are however some heights: mountains of Khibiny (1,191 m), in the peninsula of Kola; Valdai plateau (321 m), west of Moscow. It is on the latter that the river network of the European plain (Dniepr, Volga, Daugava) is born. The Quaternary glaciations have left their mark here, particularly in the northwest, where they are responsible for numerous lacustrine basins (Lake Ladoga, Lake Onega). The last glaciation, which ended about 14,000 years ago, left a long frontal moraine, from the Belarusian border to the Arctic coast, west of the mouth of the Pechora. The southern part of the European plain is characterized by very fertile soils of black earth (Chernozem), especially in the basins of Don, Volga and Kuban.
To the south, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, stands the mountainous barrier of the Caucasus, a young, strongly seismic mountain. The Greater Caucasus in the north forms the border with Georgia and Azerbaijan. It rises to 5 642 m of altitude at the summit of Mount Elbrouz, extinct volcano and highest mountain of Europe. To the east, the European Russia is bordered by the Ural mountains, an old eroded massif of medium altitude (Narodnaya, 1,894 m). These are mountains rich in mineral deposits.
To the east of the Ural stretches for more than 2,000 km, the vast plain of western Siberia, open on the Arctic Ocean, whose base is constituted by an old base. It consists of lowland (less than 200 m altitude), extremely flat and poorly drained. Covered by glacial deposits, inherited from the Quaternary glaciations, the region is dotted with lakes and wetlands.
To the east of the Yenisei lie the central Siberian plateaus, which rise between 300 and 1,200 meters above sea level. The area, broken by ditches (Lake Baikal) and deep canyons, has many mineral deposits. At the southern borders stands a high mountain barrier formed by the Altai (Beloukha Mountain, 4,506 m) and the Saiyan Mountains (Mounkou Sardyk, 3,491 m).
East of the Lena rise the mountain ranges of the Russian Far East (Eastern Siberia), with north the mountains of Kolyma (1 962 m), in the center the Verkhoyansk mountains (2 389 m) to the southwest are the Stanovoï (2,999m) and the Iablonovyi (1,680m) mountains, and to the south-east the Sikhote-Aline Mountains (2,077m). To the east, along the Pacific Ocean, are newer and higher chains. Volcanic activity is important in this region which is part of the “Pacific Ring of Fire”. The Kamchatka peninsula has 120 volcanoes of which 23 are still active. The highest, Kliuchevskaya Mountain, is 4,750 m high. The Kamchatka volcanic chain extends southward to the Kuril Islands, which also have about 100 volcanoes, 35 of which are active.
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