query: country vries strait
supports: The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (, or  Japanese: or ), in Russia's Sakhalin Oblast region, form a volcanic archipelago that stretches approximately northeast from Hokkaido, Japan, to Kamchatka, Russia, separating the Sea of Okhotsk from the North Pacific Ocean. There are 56 islands and many minor rocks. It consists of Greater Kuril Ridge and Lesser Kuril Ridge. The total land area is and the total population is 19,434. An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island in a river or a lake island may be called an eyot or ait, and a small island off the coast may be called a holm. A grouping of geographically or geologically related islands is called an archipelago, e.g. the Philippines. The Americas, also collectively called America, encompass the totality of the continents of North America and South America. Together they make up most of Earth's western hemisphere and comprise the "New World".  The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. Earth, otherwise known as the world, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets. The Arctic (or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Alaska (United States), Canada, Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Norway, Russia, and Sweden. Land within the Arctic region has seasonally varying snow and ice cover, with predominantly treeless permafrost-containing tundra. Arctic seas contain seasonal sea ice in many places. The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, although some oceanographers call it the Arctic Mediterranean Sea or simply the Arctic Sea, classifying it a mediterranean sea or an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. Alternatively, the Arctic Ocean can be seen as the northernmost part of the all-encompassing World Ocean. Siberia is an extensive geographical region, and by the broadest definition is also known as North Asia. Siberia has historically been a part of Russia since the 17th century. Vries Strait or Miyabe Line is a strait between two main islands of the Kurils . It is located between the northeastern end of the island of Iturup and the southwestern headland of Urup Island , connecting the Sea of Okhotsk on the west with the Pacific Ocean on the east . It has a width of 42 km. The strait is named after Dutch explorer Maarten Gerritsz Vries , the first recorded European to explore the area in 1643 . Antarctica (US English , UK English or ) is Earth's southernmost continent. It contains the geographic South Pole and is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At , it is the fifth-largest continent. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages in thickness, which extends to all but the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula. An ocean (the sea of classical antiquity) is a body of saline water that composes much of a planet's hydrosphere. On Earth, an ocean is one of the major conventional divisions of the World Ocean, which covers almost 71% of its surface. These are, in descending order by area, the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Southern (Antarctic), and Arctic Oceans. The word "sea" is often used interchangeably with "ocean" in American English but, strictly speaking, a sea is a body of saline water (generally a division of the world ocean) partly or fully enclosed by land. Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. The neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north; the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east. Australia's capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney. The Sea of Okhotsk is a marginal sea of the western Pacific Ocean, lying between the Kamchatka Peninsula on the east, the Kuril Islands on the southeast, the island of Hokkaido to the south, the island of Sakhalin along the west, and a long stretch of eastern Siberian coast (the Shantar Sea) along the west and north. The northeast corner is the Shelikhov Gulf. The sea is named after Okhotsk, the first Russian settlement in the Far East. Okhotsk is an urban locality (a work settlement) and the administrative center of Okhotsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located at the mouth of the Okhota River on the Sea of Okhotsk. Population:  The Antarctic (US English , UK English or and or ) is a polar region, specifically the region around the Earth's South Pole, opposite the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antarctic comprises in the strict sense the continent of Antarctica and the island territories located on the Antarctic Plate. In a broader sense the Antarctic region include the ice shelves, waters, and island territories in the Southern Ocean situated south of the Antarctic Convergence, a zone approximately wide varying in latitude seasonally. The region covers some 20% of the Southern Hemisphere, of which 5.5% (14 million km) is the surface area of the Antarctic continent itself. All of the land and ice shelves south of 60°S latitude are administrated under the Antarctic Treaty System. In a biogeographic sense, the Antarctic ecozone is one of eight ecozones of the Earth's land surface. Russia (from the  Rus'), also officially known as the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. At , Russia is the largest country in the world by surface area, covering more than one-eighth of the Earth's inhabited land area, and the ninth most populous, with over 140 million people at the end of March 2016. The European western part of the country is much more populated and urbanised than the eastern, about 77% of the population live in European Russia. Russia's capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other major urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara. Iturup (Ainu: , "Etuworop-sir" "Etorofu-t") is one of the Kuril Islands. It was formerly known as "Staten Island". It is the largest and northernmost island in the southern Kurils, which are disputed between Japan and Russia. The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean or the Austral Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. As such, it is regarded as the fourth-largest of the five principal oceanic divisions: smaller than the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans but larger than the Arctic Ocean. This ocean zone is where cold, northward flowing waters from the Antarctic mix with warmer subantarctic waters. Shelikhov Gulf is a large gulf off the northwestern coast of Kamchatka, Russia. It is located in the northeastern corner of the Sea of Okhotsk and it branches into two main arms, Gizhigin Bay to the west and Penzhin Bay to the east. Its southwest corner is formed by the P'yagin Peninsula, Yam Gulf and the Yamsky Islands. Sakhalin is a large Russian island in the North Pacific Ocean, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N. It is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast. Sakhalin, which is about one fifth the size of Japan, is just off the east coast of Russia, and just north of Japan.
candidates: antarctic antarctica atlantic ocean australia canada denmark finland greenland japan new zealand papua new guinea philippines russia solomon islands united states world
answer: russia