Solution:
Russia is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia .
Once the preeminent republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.; commonly known as the Soviet Union), Russia became anindependent country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 .
By far the world’s largest country, it covers nearly twice the territory of Canada, the second largest.
It extends across the whole of northern Asia and the eastern third of Europe, spanning 11 time zones and incorporating a great range of environments and landforms, from deserts to semiarid steppes to deep forests and Arctic tundra.
Russia contains Europe’s longest river, the Volga, and its largest lake, Ladoga .
Russia also is home to the world’s deepest lake, Baikal , and the country recorded the world’s lowest temperature outside the North and South poles .
Russia is bounded to the north and east by the Arctic and Pacific oceans, and it has small frontages in the northwest on the Baltic Sea at St. Petersburg and at the detached Russian oblast (region) of Kaliningrad (a part of what was once East Prussia annexed in 1945), which also abuts Poland and Lithuania .
To the south, Russia borders North Korea, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia .
To the southwest and west, it borders Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, and Estonia , as well as Finland and Norway .
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