Russia,[b] or the Russian Federation,[c] is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia.

It is
the largest country in the world, and extends across eleven time zones; sharing land borders with
fourteen countries.[d] Russia is the most populous country in Europe and the ninth-most populous
country in the world. It is a highly urbanised country, with sixteen of its urban areas having more
than 1 million inhabitants. Moscow, the most populous metropolitan area in Europe, is the capital
and largest city of Russia, while Saint Petersburg is its second-largest city and cultural centre.

Human settlement on the territory of modern Russia dates back to the Lower Paleolithic. The East
Slavs emerged as a recognised group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries CE. The first East
Slavic state, Kievan Rus', arose in the 9th century, and in 988, it adopted Orthodox Christianity from
the Byzantine Empire. Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated; the Grand Duchy of Moscow led the
unification of Russian lands, leading to the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547. By the
early 18th century, Russia had vastly expanded through conquest, annexation, and the efforts
of Russian explorers, developing into the Russian Empire, which remains the third-largest empire in
history. However, with the Russian Revolution in 1917, Russia's monarchic rule was abolished and
eventually replaced by the Russian SFSR—the world's first constitutionally socialist state. Following
the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR established the Soviet Union with three other Soviet
republics, within which it was the largest and principal constituent. The Soviet Union
underwent rapid industrialisation in the 1930s, amidst the deaths of millions under Joseph Stalin's
rule, and later played a decisive role for the Allies in World War II by leading large-scale efforts on
the Eastern Front. With the onset of the Cold War, it competed with the United States for ideological
dominance and international influence. The Soviet era of the 20th century saw some of the most
significant Russian technological achievements, including the first human-made satellite and the first
human expedition into outer space.

In 1991, the Russian SFSR emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the Russian
Federation. A new constitution was adopted, which established a federal semi-presidential system.
Since the turn of the century, Russia's political system has been dominated by Vladimir Putin, under
whom the country has experienced democratic backsliding and become
an authoritarian dictatorship. Russia has been militarily involved in a number of conflicts in former
Soviet states and other countries, including its war with Georgia in 2008 and its war with
Ukraine since 2014. The latter has involved the internationally unrecognised annexations of
Ukrainian territory, including Crimea in 2014 and four other regions in 2022, during an ongoing
invasion.

Russia is generally considered a great power and is a regional power, possessing the largest stockpile
of nuclear weapons and having the third-highest military expenditure in the world. It has a high-
income economy, which is the eleventh-largest in the world by nominal GDP and fourth-
largest by PPP, relying on its vast mineral and energy resources; which rank as the second-largest in
the world for oil and natural gas production. However, Russia ranks very low in international
measurements of democracy, human rights and freedom of the press, and also has high levels of
perceived corruption. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council; a member
state of the G20, SCO, BRICS, APEC, OSCE, and WTO; and the leading member state of post-Soviet
organisations such as CIS, CSTO, and EAEU. Russia is home to 32 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Etymology

Main article: Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia

There are several words in Russian which translate to "Russians" in English. The noun and
adjective русский, russkiy refers to ethnic Russians. The
adjective российский, rossiiskiy denotes Russian citizens regardless of ethnicity. The same applies to
the more recently coined noun россиянин, rossiianyn, in the sense of citizen of the Russian state.[24]
[25]

The oldest endonyms used were Rus' (Русь) and the "Russian land" (Русская земля, Russkaya
zemlya).[26] According to the Primary Chronicle, the word Rus' is derived from the Rus' people, who
were a Swedish tribe, and from where the three original members of the Rurikid dynasty came from.
[27]
The Finnish word for Swedes, ruotsi, has the same origin.[28] In modern historiography, the early
medieval East Slavic state is usually referred to as Kievan Rus', named after its capital city.[29] Another
Medieval Latin name for Rus' was Ruthenia.[30]

In Russian, the current name of the country, Россия (Rossiya), comes from the Byzantine
Greek name Ρωσία (Rosía).[31] The name Росия (Rosiya) was first attested in 1387.[32] The
name Rossiya appeared in Russian sources in the 15th century and began to replace the
vernacular Rus' during the rise of Moscow as the centre of a unified Russian state.[33] However, until
the end of the 17th century, the country was more often referred to by its inhabitants as Rus', the
"Russian land" (Russkaya zemlya), or the "Muscovite state" (Moskovskoye gosudarstvo), among
other variations.[34][24]

In 1721, Peter the Great proclaimed the Russian Empire (Rossiyskaya imperiya).[34] The
name Rossiya was used as the common designation for the multinational Russian Empire and then
for the modern Russian state.[35] Rossiya is distinguished from the ethnonym russkiy, as it refers to a
supranational identity, including ethnic Russians.[35] After the Russian Revolution and the
proclamation of the Russian SFSR in 1918, the "Russian" in the title of the state was Rossiyskaya,
rather than Russkaya, as the former denoted a multinational state, while the latter had ethnic
dimensions.[36] In modern Russian, the name Rus' is still used in poetry or prose to refer to either the
older Russia or an imagined essence of Russia.[29]