Russia

Russia is the biggest country of the world. It occupies 11.5% of the world surface and its area is 17 mln sq. km. The Russian territory lies from the Baltic Sea in the west to the Sea of Japan in the east and stretches for 10 thousand km. It has 11 time zones. The capital of Russia is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is an important business and culture center and it’s called the second or north capital of Russia.

There are more than thousand cities in Russia. The biggest cities with the population of about 1 million people are Moscow (9 mln), Saint Petersburg (5 mln), Kazan, Nizhniy Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Omsk, Chelyabinsk, Perm, Ufa, Rostov-on-Don, Volgograd.

Russia is a democratic federative republic with presidential government and parliament consisting of State Duma and Council of Federation. In 2008 Dmitry Medvedev was elected the President of the Russian Federation.