Question: Is Russia in Europe or Asia?

European Russia



European Russia, the western part of the Russian Federation, is a part of Eastern Europe. With a population of 110 million people, European Russia has about 77% of Russia's population, but covers less than 25% of Russia's territory. European Russia includes Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the two largest cities in Russia.
The boundaries between continents are almost exclusively determined by geography, with the one exception being that the eastern boundary of Europe is generally considered, by convention, to run along the Ural Mountains, the Ural River, the Caucasus Mountains, the Turkish Straits. The southern part of European Russia has some small areas that lie geographically south of the Caucasus Mountain range, and therefore are geographically in Asia; this territory includes the city of Sochi.
The other, eastern, part of the Russian Federation forms part of northern Asia, and is known as North Asia, also called Asian Russia or Siberia. Europe also forms a subcontinent within Eurasia,[1]
making all of Russia a part of the Eurasian continent.
Demographics

Russia is not proportionately populated between its larger Asian portion, which contains about 23% of the country's population, and its smaller European portion, which contains about 77%. The European portion contains about 110 million people out of Russia's total population of about 144 million in an area covering nearly 4,000,000km2 (1,500,000sqmi); (making it by far the largest European country) an average of 27.5 people per kilometre2 (70 per sq mi).[2]:6[2]:10
The eastern portion of Russia, mostly encompassing Siberia, is part of Asia and makes up more than 75% of the territory with 22% of the country's population at 2.5 people per kilometre2 (6.5 per sq mi).[2]:6
History
Some theories say that early Eastern Slavs arrived in modern-day western Russia (also in Ukraine and Belarus) sometime during the middle of the first millennium AD.[3] Around the middle of the first millenium the population in todays European Russia was composed of Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Caucasian, Scandinavian, Baltic, Finnic, Khazarian, Hungarian and Norse peoples.[4] One of the first Rus' regions was according to the Sofia First Chronicle Veliky Novgorod in 859. In late 8th and early-to-mid-9th centuries AD the Rus' Khaganate was formed in todays western Russia. The region was a place of operations for Varangians, eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants, and pirates. From the late 9th to the mid-13th century a large section of todays European Russia was part of Kievan Rus'. Many sources say that Ryazan, Kolomna, Moscow, Vladimir and Kiev were destroyed by the Mongol invasion. After the Mongol invasion the Muscovite Rus' arose and formed over time today's Russia. Over all this time, western Russia and the various Rus' regions had strong cultural contacts with the Byzantine Empire, while the Slavic culture was cultivated all the time.[5] The elements of East Slavic paganism and Christianity overlapped each other and sometimes produced even double faith in Muscovite Rus'.[6] The synthesis of Orthodox faith and Slavic paganism is still part of Russian culture.
Alignment with administrative divisions
The administrative districts (on a large scale called federal districts) of the Russian Federation do not exactly line up with European Russia, but they are decent approximations, depending on exactly how Europe is defined. There are two major trends, one to use administrative divisions north of the mouth of the Ural River and one to draw a line of falseness from the Ural River, through the town of Yekaterinburg.
The following administrative districts are overwhelmingly European:


See also
North Asia
Caucasus
Russian Far East
Siberia






Coordinates: