Russia Is 6.6 Million Square Miles: Here's How They Actually Did It

Here's Russia staring you down from your world map, casually hogging 11% of all land on Earth. That red blob stretching across two continents didn't happen by accident. Tyler Cooper breaks down the wild 60-year sprint that took Russia from a medieval kingdom around Moscow to the Pacific Ocean, covering 4,000 miles faster than most empires could dream of. 🎯 What You'll Learn: • How Russia expanded 4,000 miles east in just 60 years (1580-1640), faster than the American westward expansion • Why 77% of Russia sits in Asia but 80% of Russians live in the European part • The geographic advantages that made this massive expansion actually possible • How Russia ended up with 11 time zones, more than any other country on the planet 👤 Perfect for: anyone who's ever looked at a world map and wondered how the hell one country got so ridiculously huge. 📍 Chapters: [00:00] Tyler Cooper introduces the Russia size mystery [01:30] The 60-year dash to the Pacific that changed everything [04:00] Why geography made Russia's expansion inevitable [07:00] The Siberian fur trade that funded an empire [10:00] How Russia's size became both blessing and curse [12:00] What Russia's expansion teaches us about modern borders Russia spans 6,200 miles from east to west and covers more ground than Pluto. But size isn't everything when most of your territory is frozen wasteland that's nearly impossible to develop or defend. 🔔 Never miss an episode: Follow Elsewhere on Spotify or Apple Podcasts and turn on notifications. New episodes drop daily, your next favorite insight is one tap away. 🔍 Topics: Russian history, territorial expansion, Siberian exploration, geopolitics, world geography ----------- Keywords: global affairs, world news, international stories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices