Russia (, Rossiya), also the Russian Federation (??????????? ??????????, Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; ), is a transcontinental country extending over much of northern Eurasia. It is a semi-presidential republic comprising 84 federal subjects. Russia shares land borders with the following countries (counter-clockwise from northwest to southeast): Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania (Kaliningrad Oblast), Poland (Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea. It is also close to the U.S. state of Alaska, Sweden and Japan across relatively small stretches of water (the Bering Strait, the Baltic Sea, and La Pérouse Strait, respectively). At , Russia is by far the largest country in the world, covering more than an eighth of the Earth?s land area; with 142 million people, it is the ninth largest by population. It extends across the whole of north