Europe
Russia
Everything you need to know about Russia for geography games and satellite imagery — capital, population, time zone, and how to recognise it from above.
Quick facts
How to spot Russia from satellite imagery
Russia is the largest country in the world by a margin so large it bends intuition. At 17.1 million square kilometres, it is nearly twice the size of the next largest country and accounts for roughly an eighth of all the land surface on Earth. Played on a satellite-imagery game, this means Russia comes up often. It also means that knowing how to recognize its many regional landscapes is one of the most rewarding skills in the genre.
The challenge with identifying Russia is that the country is so vast it does not have a single landscape. The Black Sea coast looks Mediterranean. Karelia looks like Finland. The taiga of Siberia looks like Canada. The far east looks like northern Japan in places. This guide walks through the signals that consistently point to Russia, and how to triangulate which region of Russia you are looking at.
Read the full satellite guideCan you find Russia from above?
Test your geography skills on a 3D globe and see how often you place this country correctly.