<Li> The Crimean Peninsula is recognized as territory of Ukraine by a majority of UN member nations, but is de facto administered by Russia . </Li> <Li> The Belavezha Accords was signed in Brest, Belarus on December 8, creating the Commonwealth of Independent States in which the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR ratified the accords on December 12, denouncing the 1922 treaty . On December 25, Russian SFSR was renamed the Russian Federation and the following the day on December 26, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union ratified the accords, effectively dissolving the Soviet Union . </Li> <P> Russia (/ ˈrʌʃə / (listen); Russian: Росси́я, tr . Rossiya; IPA: (rɐˈsjijə)), also officially known as the Russian Federation (Russian: Российская Федерация, tr . Rossiyskaya Federatsiya; IPA: (rɐˈsijskəjə fjɪdjɪˈratsɨjə)), is a country in Eurasia . At 17,125,200 square kilometres (6,612,100 sq mi), Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one - eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 144 million people at the end of March 2016 . The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern; about 77% of the population live in European Russia . Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world; other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, and Kazan . </P> <P> Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a wide range of environments and landforms . From northwest to southeast, Russia shares land borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both with Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, China, Mongolia and North Korea . It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the U.S. state of Alaska across the Bering Strait . </P>

What region of the world is russia in