With a land area of 17.09 million square kilometers, Russia is the largest country in the world, and directly occupies 1 9 of the world's land area. The territory of Russia is divided into two main parts: the European part and the Asian part. The European part is mainly concentrated in the Eastern European Plain, which covers an area of 4 million square kilometers and is one of the three largest black soil distribution areas in the world. This land is the economic, political and cultural center of Russia. The Asian part is Siberia, which covers an area of 13 million square kilometers, and the climate here is cold, but the land is rich in oil, natural gas and other cross-production resources. Russia's economy is currently heavily dependent on energy exports, and Siberia is the main distribution of these energy exports.
The length of the Russian coastline is 3With 30,000 kilometers, it has the longest coastline in the world. Russia is bordered by the Baltic Sea to the northwest, the Black Sea to the southwest, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the east. From the map, Russia does not lack ports and borders the three oceans, but in fact Russia is located at a high latitude and seriously lacks good ports. The reason for Russia's continuous expansion from the 17th century was to find good ports. In the 17th century, Peter the Great fought a war with Sweden in order to gain access to the Baltic Sea, and Sweden was defeated and had to cede a large number of Baltic coastal lands to Tsarist Russia. Peter the Great also built a city at the mouth of the Baltic Sea, St. Petersburg, one of Russia's ice-free ports in the Baltic Sea.
In the 19th century, Tsarist Russia set the next goal of expansion on the Black Sea. The Black Sea coast is an ice-free port. Tsarist Russia's biggest rival in the Black Sea was Ottoman Turkey. Tsarist Russia fought nine wars with the Ottoman Empire, and Tsarist Russia seized large swathes of the Black Sea from the Ottoman Empire. Although Tsarist Russia seized a large area of the Black Sea, the Ottoman Empire still had a trump card in its hands - the Turkish Straits. The Turkish Straits are the only access point from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. During the Soviet era, it wanted to jointly manage the Turkish straits with Turkey, but Turkey refused. One of the most important treaties in which Turkey was able to join NATO was its possession of the Turkish Straits, which were the keys to the Black Sea Fleet. Russia's strategic value in ice-free ports in the Black Sea has declined.
In the mid-19th century, the Qing Dynasty signed the Treaty of Aijun and the Treaty of Beijing with Tsarist Russia, and Tsarist Russia seized more than 1 million Outer Northeast land from the Qing Dynasty, including a piece of land on the Pacific coast. Among the ports of the Pacific coast, including Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, only Vladivostok is an ice-free port. Vladivostok also has a three-month freeze period a year. Russia's largest port in the Arctic Ocean is Murmansk, which is located at a high latitude but is affected by the North Atlantic Current, and there is no freezing in winter.
In order to better protect the sea areas in these four directions, Russia has set up four major fleets, and Russia has become the Baltic Fleet in the Baltic direction, where Russia has only two ports, Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg. With Finland and Sweden joining NATO, the Baltic Sea is already being monitored by NATO. Russia established the Black Sea Fleet in the Black Sea direction, and after the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine used Western assistance to continuously attack the Russian Black Sea Fleet, and Russia's Black Sea suffered huge losses. Russia has formed the Northern Fleet in the Arctic Ocean, with its headquarters in Murmansk, which is frozen all year round. The port shipping value here is not great. Russia has become the Pacific Fleet in the Pacific Ocean, and Russia has Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands in its hands, and it is also the easiest place for Russia's four major fleets to enter the oceanic navy.