russian couple made me mad || Russia is almost unimaginably large. It’s not just the largest country on Earth; it’s so enormous that you could fit entire continents inside it and still have millions of square miles left over. RUSSIA’S TOTAL AREA 6,601,670 square miles 17.1 million km² — approximately 11% of Earth’s land area. Putting Russia’s size into perspective * Almost twice the size of the United States. Russia is approximately 1.74 times the size of the entire U.S., including Alaska. * Larger than Antarctica. Russia has roughly 3 million km² more territory than the Antarctic continent. * Larger than Pluto’s surface area. Russia covers about 17.1 million km², compared with Pluto’s approximately 17.7 million km² of total surface area—so it’s actually slightly smaller, but remarkably close. * Nearly 45% larger than all of Europe. Even counting European Russia as part of Europe, Russia’s total territory dwarfs the continent. * About 1.7 times the size of Canada. Canada is the world’s second-largest country, yet Russia is millions of square miles larger. * Spans 11 time zones. When people in western Russia are eating breakfast, people in the Russian Far East may already be preparing for bed. Russia compared with other countries Russia 17.1M Canada 10M United States 9.8M China 9.6M Brazil 8.5M Australia 7.7M Area in millions of km², rounded. Imagine traveling across Russia Suppose you drove from western Russia all the way toward the Pacific coast. * At 60 mph, driving continuously for 100 hours would cover 6,000 miles. * A flight from Moscow to Vladivostok takes roughly 8–9 hours. * Traveling the Trans-Siberian Railway from Moscow to Vladivostok takes approximately six to seven days. * Russia is so wide that its easternmost territory is geographically closer to parts of the United States than to Moscow. And perhaps the craziest fact: Russia has roughly 143 million people, fewer than half the population of the United States, despite having nearly twice the territory. Much of that enormous space consists of Siberian forests, mountains, tundra, and sparsely inhabited wilderness. One important caveat: the familiar Mercator world map exaggerates Russia’s visual size because so much of it lies at high latitudes. But even on an equal-area map, Russia is still comfortably the largest country on Earth. - @c3326895eup