the russian federation

The Russian Federation is the largest country in the world with an area of over 17, 000, 000 square kilometres. It covers more than one eighth of the Earth’s inhabited land area. Russia ranks eighth in the world in population; 143 million people live there. Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan and the United States.

The Russian Federation stretches across much of the north of Eurasia and spans nine time zones. The country accommodates a great variety of landscapes and climates. Most of Russia is in zones of a continental and arctic climate. Most of the land consists of vast plains, both in the European part and the Asian part known as Siberia. These plains are steppe to the south and heavily forested to the north, with tundra along the northern coast. Mountain ranges are found along the southern borders, such as the Caucasus (containing Mount Elbrus, Europe’s highest point at 5, 633 m) and the Altai, and in the eastern parts such as the Verkhoyansk Range or the volcanoes on Kamchatka. The more central Ural Mountains, a north-south range that forms the primary divide between Europe and Asia, are also notable.

Russia’s most important rivers are the Volga (the longest river in Europe), and the Ob, the Yenisei and the Lena in Siberia and the Amur in the Far East. Major lakes include Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest lake with the depth of 1, 600 metres, Lake Ladoga and Lake Onega. Russia has 13 cities with over a million inhabitants: Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhniy Novgorod and others.

The Russian Federation is a federal state. The head of state is the President of the Russian Federation. The President is the guarantor of the Constitution and Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The President is directly elected by the citizenry of the Russian Federation for a four-year term. The President nominates the highest state officials and governors and is also head of the Russian National Security Council.

The legislative power is vested in the Federal Assembly – the Parliament of the Russian Federation. The bicameral Federal Assembly consists of an upper house known as the Council of Federation whose delegates are appointed by executive and legislative bodies of federal subjects and a lower house known as the State Duma. The Council of Federation has 166 members. The State Duma comprises 450 deputies who are elected by proportional representation from nation-wide party lists. The Federal Assembly adopts federal law, declares war, approves treaties, has the power of the purse and the power of impeachment of the President.

The Government of the Russian Federation exercises the executive power in the Russian Federation. The head of government is the Prime Minister (the Chairman of the Government). The members of the government are the deputy prime ministers and the federal ministers. The Prime Minister is appointed by the President of the Russian Federation. The appointment of the Prime Minister requires the consent of the State Duma. He or she succeeds to the presidency if the current president dies, is incapacitated, or resigns. The government issues its acts in the way of decisions and orders. These must not contradict the constitution, constitutional laws, federal laws, and Presidential decrees, and are signed by the Prime Minister.

The judicial power is exercised by the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of Arbitration and lower federal courts.

The Russian Federation consists of 88 different federal subjects: republics, territories (krais), regions (oblasts), cities of federal significance, autonomous region (oblast), autonomous districts (okrugs). These subjects of the Russian Federation are deemed to have equal political rights but they are not equal in area, population or economic development. There are over 24, 000 municipalities in Russia. The capital of the Russian Federation is Moscow with a population of over 10 million people.