How Big Is Russia Really? Numbers That Will Surprise You

How big is Russia, really? On any world map it already looks massive. But the actual numbers are wilder than you think. Russia covers around 17.1 million km² (6.6 million sq mi), making it by far the largest country on Earth. That is roughly 11% of all the land on the planet. For context: the contiguous United States fits inside Russia more than twice. In this post we break down the numbers that bend every map, and why flying from one end of Russia to the other takes nearly a full work day.

How big is Russia in square kilometers?

Russia covers about 17.1 million km² (6,612,073 sq mi). That makes it the largest country in the world. The area equals roughly 11% of Earth’s habitable land, or one ninth of the planet. For scale: Texas is 696,241 km². Russia is about 25 times the size of Texas. Even Canada, the second largest country, only covers 9.98 million km², just over half the size of Russia.

The exact number varies slightly across sources, somewhere between 17,075,200 and 17,125,191 km². The reason: some sources include inland waters like Lake Baikal, others do not. The World Bank reported 17,125,190 km² for 2023.

Russia vs USA: who is actually bigger?

Russia is roughly 1.74 times the size of the entire United States, including Alaska and Hawaii. If you only count the contiguous 48 states, Russia is 2.2 times bigger. That means the lower 48 fits inside Russia more than twice, with room to spare.

In raw numbers: Russia has about 7.3 million km² more land than the US. That is more land than all of Australia, or larger than the entire European Union. And yet only around 144 million people live in Russia, less than half the US population. That makes Russia one of the most sparsely populated countries on Earth.

11 time zones: what that actually feels like

When the sun rises in Kaliningrad, it is already late evening in Vladivostok. Russia stretches across 11 time zones, from UTC+02:00 to UTC+12:00. That is a world record. No other country has more time zones on its mainland.

Flying from Kaliningrad in the far west to Vladivostok in the far east covers about 7,348 km (4,566 mi). Direct flights are rare, but on average you spend around 9 hours in the air. With a layover it usually stretches to 10 or 11 hours. For context: that is longer than a flight from New York to London, and almost as long as Los Angeles to Tokyo.

More forest than any other country on Earth

Russia has approximately 815 million hectares of forest. That is more than any other country in the world. About 20% of all forest on Earth grows in Russia. For comparison: Canada, the second largest forested country, has 347 million hectares. Russia has more than twice the forest cover of Canada.

Nearly half of Russia’s total land area is forest. The Siberian taiga alone is the largest continuous forest belt on the planet, stretching thousands of kilometers from the Baltic to the Pacific. If you cut it down, you would erase a fifth of the world’s trees.

14 neighbors: Russia shares more borders than almost anyone

Russia borders 14 countries: Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia, and North Korea. No other country has more land neighbors (China also has 14, depending on how you count).

The Russia-Kazakhstan border is 7,644 km long, the longest continuous land border in the world. That is roughly the distance from New York to Hawaii in a straight line. In total Russia has 22,407 km of land borders. Want to test how well you know world geography? Try our geography estimation questions, free and runs in your browser.

Why does Russia look even bigger on the map?

Russia is huge. But on a standard Mercator world map it looks even larger than it really is. Blame the map projection. Countries near the poles get stretched out. If you want to dig into more map myths, check out our post on the 12 most counterintuitive geography facts. It covers exactly these distortions.

Russia is not just big. It is extreme in every dimension: area, time zones, forest, borders. The numbers show how hard it is to truly grasp a country this size. Want more geography aha moments? Try our geography estimation questions and see how well you can guess country sizes, distances, and populations.