<Tr> <Th> Environmental Issues </Th> <Td> deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste </Td> </Tr> <P> The geography of Russia describes the geographic features of Russia, a country extending over much of northern Eurasia . Comprising much of eastern Europe and northern Asia, it is the world's largest country in total area . Due to its size, Russia displays both monotony and diversity . As with its topography, its climates, vegetation, and soils span vast distances . From north to south the East European Plain is clad sequentially in tundra, coniferous forest (taiga), mixed and broadleaf forests, grassland (steppe), and semi-desert (fringing the Caspian Sea) as the changes in vegetation reflect the changes in climate . Siberia supports a similar sequence but is predominantly taiga . The country contains forty UNESCO biosphere reserves . </P> <P> Located in the north, west and east latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, most of Russia is much closer to the North Pole than to the equator . Individual country comparisons are of little value in gauging Russia's enormous size and diversity . The country's 17.09 million square kilometers include one - eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area . Its European portion, which occupies a substantial part of continental Europe, is home to most of Russia's industrial activity and is where, roughly between the Dnieper River and the Ural Mountains, the Russian Empire took shape . Russia includes the entire northern portion of Asia . </P> <P> From west to east, the country stretches from Kaliningrad (the exclave separated by the 1990 secession of Lithuania from the then - Soviet Union) to Ratmanov Island (one of the Diomede Islands) in the Bering Strait . This distance spanning about 6,800 kilometres (4,200 mi), to Nome, Alaska . From north to south, the country ranges from the northern tip of the Russian Arctic islands at Franz Josef Land to the southern tip of the Republic of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea, spanning about 4,500 kilometres (2,800 mi) of extremely varied, often inhospitable terrain . </P>

Is the soviet union north or south of the equator