Russia covers roughly 17.1 million square kilometers, more territory than the next two largest countries combined, yet its national population density is only about 8.5 to 9 people per square kilometer, among the lowest of any major country. That national average conceals a settlement pattern in which most Russians live on a comparatively small share of that land, concentrated overwhelmingly in the western quarter of the country.
Russia Has Enormous Territory but Uneven Population Distribution
The Russian Federal State Statistics Service, Rosstat, and UN-derived estimates put Russia’s total population at roughly 143 to 146 million as of 2025, ranking ninth in the world. Worldometer’s elaboration of UN data places the July 2026 figure at approximately 143.4 million, with land area listed at 16,376,870 square kilometers, while Rosstat-sourced territorial breakdowns put total area closer to 17.1 million square kilometers including all federal subjects. The gap between sources reflects differences in how land versus water area is counted, not a disagreement about Russia’s basic scale.
Either measure produces the same conclusion: national density sits close to single digits per square kilometer, a figure that looks almost uninhabited by global standards. For comparison, Germany’s density exceeds 230 people per square kilometer, and even sparsely populated Canada, at roughly 4.2 people per square kilometer, is a more useful comparison than most European states. But unlike Canada, where the population concentrates near a single southern border, Russia’s settlement pattern follows a more complex historical and economic logic rooted in centuries of westward-oriented development.
Where Most Russians Live
Rosstat’s federal district estimates for 2025 show a lopsided distribution. The Central Federal District, anchored by Moscow, held approximately 40.3 million people, more than any other district and close to 28 percent of the national total on just 3.8 percent of Russia’s land area. The Volga Federal District followed with about 28.4 million, and the Southern and Siberian districts each held roughly 16.3 to 16.5 million.
Population by Federal District, 2025 Estimate
| Federal District | Population | Area (km²) | Density (per km²) | Share of National Population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central | 40.30 million | 647,205 | 62.3 | 27.6% |
| Volga | 28.41 million | 1,036,975 | 27.4 | 19.5% |
| Siberian | 16.49 million | 4,361,727 | 3.8 | 11.3% |
| Southern | 16.32 million | 447,821 | 36.5 | 11.2% |
| Northwestern | 13.88 million | 1,686,972 | 8.2 | 9.5% |
| Ural | 12.28 million | 1,818,497 | 6.75 | 8.4% |
| North Caucasus | 10.31 million | 170,409 | 60.5 | 7.1% |
| Far Eastern | 7.86 million | 6,952,555 | 1.1 | 5.4% |
Note: District totals from a 2025 territorial estimate sum to roughly 145.9 million, slightly above the UN-derived national figure of approximately 143 million; the difference reflects methodology and rounding across sources rather than a substantive dispute.
The table makes the imbalance explicit. The Far Eastern Federal District, at nearly 7 million square kilometers, covers about 41 percent of Russia’s entire territory but holds only around 5 to 6 percent of its population, a density of roughly 1.1 people per square kilometer. The Central Federal District occupies less than 4 percent of the country’s land but houses more than a quarter of its people.
Why Russia’s Population Is Concentrated in the West
Several overlapping forces explain the concentration of Russians in European Russia and the relative emptiness of Siberia and the Far East.
Climate and agricultural suitability: Much of Siberia lies within subarctic and continental climate zones with short growing seasons, and large stretches sit atop permafrost, limiting large-scale agricultural settlement. European Russia’s more temperate climate and richer soils, particularly in the Central Black Earth region, supported denser agrarian populations for centuries before industrialization.
Historical settlement patterns: Russian state formation and population growth originated around Moscow and the Volga basin. Expansion eastward into Siberia, beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was driven by fur trade and later resource extraction, producing a scattering of trading posts and mining towns rather than the dense agrarian settlement that characterized the west.
Soviet industrial development: The twentieth century added new eastern population centers, often built around specific industrial or extraction projects, sometimes involving forced labor and state-directed relocation, but these additions never approached the density achieved in European Russia over a much longer settlement history.
Transportation infrastructure: The Trans-Siberian Railway, completed in the early twentieth century, remains the primary land link across Siberia. Much of the region still lacks the dense road and rail network that supports the concentrated urban and agricultural geography of the west, reinforcing rather than reversing the historical imbalance.
Economic opportunity and market access: Proximity to European markets, and to the country’s political and financial center in Moscow, continues to draw both population and investment toward the western quarter of the country, a pattern reinforced rather than weakened by post-Soviet economic restructuring.
Siberia and the Russian Far East
Despite covering more than half of Russia’s total land area between them, the Siberian and Far Eastern federal districts together hold under 17 percent of the national population. Major cities including Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Vladivostok anchor regional economies built around resource extraction, particularly oil, gas, coal, and minerals, alongside strategic and military functions in border areas facing China and the Pacific.
Population in these regions has generally stagnated or declined in recent decades as working-age residents move toward Moscow, St. Petersburg, and southern Russia in search of better economic opportunities and milder climates, a pattern that has persisted since the economic disruption of the 1990s despite periodic state efforts to incentivize eastern settlement.
Russia’s Urban Population
An estimated 75.4 percent of Russians lived in urban areas as of the mid-2020s, according to Worldometer’s elaboration of UN data, a share that has risen gradually from Soviet-era levels. Moscow itself, along with its surrounding oblast, anchors the country’s largest metropolitan concentration; the 2021 census recorded Moscow Oblast’s population at 8.53 million alongside the federal city of Moscow, making the wider metropolitan region by far the largest urban agglomeration in the country.
Urbanization matters for understanding density because it means population concentration happens at two scales simultaneously: nationally, in the west versus the east, and locally, in cities versus surrounding rural areas even within sparsely populated eastern regions. Novosibirsk, Siberia’s largest city, is itself a dense urban node inside an otherwise nearly empty federal district.
Population Density by Region
Regional density figures illustrate just how wide the internal variation is. The North Caucasus Federal District, though one of Russia’s smaller districts by population, recorded density around 60.5 people per square kilometer in 2025 estimates, close to the Central district’s 62.3, driven by a combination of smaller territory and historically high rural fertility in republics such as Chechnya and Dagestan. At the other extreme, the Far Eastern district’s density of roughly 1.1 people per square kilometer is closer to that of Mongolia or parts of the Canadian Arctic than to anywhere in European Russia.
This spread, from roughly 60 people per square kilometer in the North Caucasus to close to 1 in the Far East, a factor of more than 50, demonstrates why any single national density figure for Russia obscures more than it reveals.
Historical Forces That Shaped Settlement
Russia’s population geography developed across several distinct historical phases. Imperial expansion from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries pushed the country’s borders steadily eastward, but settlement lagged far behind territorial claims, particularly beyond the Ural Mountains. Soviet industrialization in the twentieth century added new population centers in Siberia and the Urals tied to specific extraction and manufacturing projects, some built through forced labor systems, but these remained islands of density within a vast, thinly populated expanse.
The post-Soviet period brought renewed westward and urban concentration, as market-driven migration replaced the state-directed settlement incentives of the Soviet era. Regions that depended on subsidized transport and wages to remain populated saw the steepest population losses once those subsidies were reduced or removed after 1991.
Russia’s Changing Geographic Population Pattern
Recent internal migration continues to favor Moscow, St. Petersburg, and southern regions with milder climates, while much of the Russian interior, the Far East, and parts of the industrial north have experienced sustained population decline. Combined with a national median age around 40.7 years and below-replacement fertility, this internal redistribution compounds regional aging, since younger residents are disproportionately the ones who relocate toward opportunity in the west.
What Russia’s Population Geography Means for the Future
The concentration of population in European Russia has practical implications for infrastructure planning, labor availability, and regional development. Sparsely populated eastern regions face structural difficulty attracting and retaining workers even where resource wealth exists, since remoteness, climate, and limited services make relocation there unattractive relative to opportunities concentrated in the west. State policy has periodically tried to reverse this pattern through subsidized eastern development programs, but the underlying economic geography, favoring the west’s climate, infrastructure, and market access, has proven difficult to offset.
Conclusion
Russia’s territorial scale is often treated as a proxy for demographic weight, but the two measures diverge sharply once the data is broken down by region. A country spanning eleven time zones houses more than a quarter of its population within the Central Federal District alone, while the Far East, covering roughly 41 percent of national territory, remains among the most thinly populated regions on Earth. Understanding Russia’s population requires separating the map from the people on it.
Key Findings
- Russia’s national population density of roughly 8.5 to 9 people per square kilometer masks internal variation spanning more than a factor of 50, from about 62 in the Central District to about 1.1 in the Far East.
- The Central Federal District holds around 28 percent of Russia’s population on under 4 percent of its land area.
- The Far Eastern Federal District covers roughly 41 percent of Russia’s territory but holds only about 5 to 6 percent of its population.
- Urbanization stands at approximately 75.4 percent nationally, meaning population concentration operates at both the regional and city scale simultaneously.
- Climate, historical settlement, Soviet-era industrial siting, transportation infrastructure, and market access together explain the enduring westward skew, a pattern that has persisted and in some respects intensified since 1991.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Where does most of Russia’s population live?
Most Russians live in the Central and Volga federal districts in the western part of the country, together accounting for close to half the national population on a small fraction of Russia’s total land area.
2. Why is Russia so sparsely populated overall?
Russia’s enormous territory includes vast areas of Siberia and the Far East with subarctic climates, permafrost, and limited agricultural potential, which historically discouraged dense settlement outside pockets tied to specific resource or industrial activity.
3. What is Russia’s most densely populated federal district?
The Central Federal District, at approximately 62 people per square kilometer in 2025 estimates, is Russia’s most densely populated large district, closely followed by the smaller North Caucasus district at around 60.5.
4. How populated is Siberia?
The Siberian and Far Eastern federal districts together hold under 17 percent of Russia’s population despite covering more than half the country’s land area; the Far Eastern district’s density of roughly 1.1 people per square kilometer is among the lowest of any major world region.
5. Is Russia’s population growing or declining?
Russia’s population has been broadly stagnant to declining in recent years, with sub-replacement fertility and a median age around 40.7 years as of the mid-2020s, though estimates vary somewhat depending on the source and methodology used.
6. How does Russia’s density compare with other large countries?
At roughly 8.5 to 9 people per square kilometer, Russia’s national density is far below that of most populous countries and is closer to sparsely settled nations like Canada or Mongolia than to Germany or China.
7. Why did population concentrate in Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Historical political centralization, economic opportunity, transportation infrastructure, and proximity to European markets have consistently drawn people to Moscow and, to a lesser extent, St. Petersburg, a pattern reinforced by post-Soviet, market-driven migration.
8. Did Soviet policy try to settle Siberia and the Far East?
Yes. Soviet-era industrialization programs built new population centers in Siberia, and the Urals tied to extraction and manufacturing, often supported by subsidized wages and forced or incentivized relocation, but density in these regions never approached levels in European Russia.
9. What explains the North Caucasus district’s high density?
The North Caucasus Federal District combines a comparatively small territory with historically higher rural fertility rates in republics such as Chechnya and Dagestan, producing density levels close to those of the much larger and more urbanized Central district.
10. Is eastern Russia losing population?
Many areas in the Siberian and Far Eastern districts have seen population decline or stagnation in recent decades, as working-age residents migrate to Moscow, St. Petersburg, and southern Russia for better economic opportunities and a better climate.
Sources
- Federal State Statistics Service of Russia (Rosstat), 2025 population estimates by federal district
- Worldometer, elaboration of UN World Population Prospects: The 2024 Revision, Russia population and density data
- Wikipedia, “2021 Russian census,” citing Rosstat’s Всероссийская перепись населения 2020 года results
- Wikipedia, federal district articles (Central, Ural, Siberian, Far Eastern), citing Rosstat census and territorial data
- geo-ref.net, Russia territorial and demographic estimation dataset, 2025
