The largest city in Russia is Moscow, with roughly 12.6 million residents, followed by Saint Petersburg (5.4 million), Novosibirsk (1.6 million), Yekaterinburg (1.5 million), Kazan (1.3 million), Nizhny Novgorod (1.3 million), Chelyabinsk (1.2 million), Samara (1.2 million), Omsk (1.2 million) and Rostov-on-Don (1.1 million). Together these ten cities anchor a nation of about 144 million people spread across eleven time zones, the largest country on Earth by land area.
The Ten Largest Russian Cities
Russia is heavily urbanized, with roughly three-quarters of its population living in cities. Yet the gap between the top two cities and the rest is dramatic. Moscow alone is more than twice the size of Saint Petersburg, and Saint Petersburg is more than three times larger than Novosibirsk in third place. After the two capitals, a cluster of "million-cities" (gorod-million) ranges from about 1.1 to 1.6 million people each.
- Moscow — approximately 12.6 million
- Saint Petersburg — approximately 5.4 million
- Novosibirsk — approximately 1.6 million
- Yekaterinburg — approximately 1.5 million
- Kazan — approximately 1.3 million
- Nizhny Novgorod — approximately 1.3 million
- Chelyabinsk — approximately 1.2 million
- Samara — approximately 1.2 million
- Omsk — approximately 1.2 million
- Rostov-on-Don — approximately 1.1 million
Moscow and Saint Petersburg: The Two Capitals
Moscow is not only Russia's capital and largest city but also the most populous city in all of Europe. It is the political, financial and cultural heart of the country, home to the Kremlin, Red Square and the headquarters of nearly every major Russian company. The city's metropolitan area pushes well beyond 17 million people, and its metro system is among the busiest in the world.
Saint Petersburg, founded by Peter the Great in 1703 on the Baltic coast, served as the imperial capital for two centuries. Often called Russia's "cultural capital," it is famous for the Hermitage Museum, its canals and palaces, and the "White Nights" of midsummer when the sun barely sets. As Russia's main Baltic seaport, it remains a vital trade and shipbuilding center.
Beyond the Capitals: Siberia and the Volga
Russia's third-largest city, Novosibirsk, sits in southwestern Siberia along the Ob River and grew rapidly after the Trans-Siberian Railway arrived. It is a hub of science and industry, anchored by the famous Akademgorodok research town. Omsk, also in Siberia, is a key oil-refining and transport center.
Several giants line the Volga River, Europe's longest. Nizhny Novgorod was a historic trade-fair city and remains an automotive manufacturing hub. Samara is a center for aerospace and was a secret wartime backup capital during World War II. Kazan, capital of the republic of Tatarstan, blends Russian and Tatar Muslim heritage and is crowned by the Kul Sharif mosque inside its UNESCO-listed Kremlin.
Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk straddle the Ural Mountains, the traditional boundary between Europe and Asia, and form Russia's heavy-industry and metallurgy belt. Rostov-on-Don, near the Sea of Azov in the south, is the gateway to the Caucasus and a major agricultural and river-port city.
Why Russia's Cities Cluster in the West
Despite Russia's vast eastern expanse, most of its largest cities lie in the European west and along southern Siberian corridors. Harsh Arctic and Siberian climates leave much of the territory sparsely settled. The Trans-Siberian Railway, completed in the early twentieth century, did the heavy lifting of populating cities like Novosibirsk, Omsk and Yekaterinburg by connecting distant regions to Moscow. For more context on the country's geography and regions, see our russia country guide.
Why the Map Stops at the Urals
Russia is by far the largest country on earth, and roughly three quarters of its people live in the western quarter of it. Every city in the top five sits west of the Urals, in European Russia, and the vast Siberian and Far Eastern territory that gives the country its size holds a small fraction of its population.
The pattern is set by climate and by history. The habitable belt narrows as it runs east, permafrost covers around two thirds of the national territory, and settlement beyond the Urals followed rivers, then the railway, rather than spreading evenly.
Novosibirsk, third on the list, is the clearest illustration. It did not exist before 1893, when it grew from a bridge camp where the Trans-Siberian Railway crossed the Ob, and it became the largest city in Asian Russia within a single lifetime.
The Cities the Second World War Moved
Several entries on this list owe their present size to a single wartime decision. As German forces advanced in 1941, the Soviet government evacuated industry eastward on an enormous scale, dismantling and relocating well over a thousand factories along with the workers to run them.
Yekaterinburg, then Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk all absorbed that transfer. Chelyabinsk built so many tanks that it was nicknamed Tankograd. The industrial base moved beyond the range of German bombers and simply stayed there after 1945, which is why the Urals and southern Siberia carry a set of million-plus industrial cities that would otherwise be provincial towns.
Two Capitals and the Rivalry Between Them
Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in 1703 on marshland at the mouth of the Neva, and it served as the imperial capital for roughly two centuries until the government returned to Moscow in 1918. The city was renamed Petrograd, then Leningrad, then back again in 1991.
The contrast between the two is a permanent feature of Russian cultural life: a planned European city of canals, granite embankments and a rigid grid, against an older capital that grew in rings around a fortress. Saint Petersburg's historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and at roughly 60 degrees north it sits far enough up for the midsummer white nights that the city builds a festival around.
Its wartime history is also without parallel among the cities here. The siege of Leningrad lasted almost 900 days from 1941 to 1944 and killed somewhere in the region of a million civilians, most of them by starvation.
The Closed Cities That Do Not Appear
Some Russian settlements were left off maps entirely. From the 1940s the Soviet Union built closed administrative-territorial formations, secret towns housing nuclear, missile and chemical research, which had no names of their own and were designated by a nearby city and a number.
Chelyabinsk-65, now Ozyorsk, was one; Arzamas-16, now Sarov, was another. Residents needed permits to enter or leave, and the towns received better food and housing than comparable places in exchange for the restrictions.
Several dozen such closed towns still exist in Russia today, holding well over a million people between them, and they remain restricted to outsiders. None is large enough to reach this ranking, but their existence explains gaps in the urban map of the Urals and Siberia.
A Million-Plus Club That Is Slowly Shrinking
Russia recognises a category of cities with more than a million residents, and the membership of that club has become a live statistical question. The national population has been falling for most of the period since 1991, with a brief recovery in the 2010s, and the decline is sharpest outside the two capitals.
Moscow and Saint Petersburg have continued to grow by drawing people in from the regions, which means the ranking is becoming more top-heavy rather than less. Cities in the Far East have been losing population steadily: Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and the industrial towns of Magadan and Chukotka have all contracted since the Soviet subsidies that sustained them ended.
The 2021 census, delayed from 2020, recorded a national population of about 147 million including Crimea, and demographic projections since have been consistently negative. For a country of Russia's size, the practical question is not which cities are largest but how much of the east remains populated at all.
Common Questions About Russian Cities
What is the largest city in Russia?
Moscow is the largest city in Russia, with around 12.6 million residents in the city proper. It is also the most populous city in Europe and the country's capital.
How many cities in Russia have over one million people?
Russia has roughly 15 to 16 "million-cities" (cities with more than one million residents). The top ten listed above are the largest, but others such as Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Perm and Voronezh also exceed a million.
Is Saint Petersburg bigger than Moscow?
No. Saint Petersburg is Russia's second-largest city with about 5.4 million people, less than half of Moscow's population. It was, however, the country's capital from 1712 until 1918.
Which is the largest Russian city in Siberia?
Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia and the third-largest in Russia, with about 1.6 million residents. It serves as a major scientific, industrial and transport hub along the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Which Russian cities are in Asia rather than Europe?
The conventional boundary runs along the Ural Mountains and the Ural River. Yekaterinburg sits almost exactly on it, and Novosibirsk, Omsk, Chelyabinsk and Krasnoyarsk all lie east of it, placing roughly half the cities in this ranking in Asian Russia despite the population being concentrated in the European part.
How far apart are Moscow and Vladivostok?
About 9,300 kilometres by the Trans-Siberian Railway, which takes roughly seven days and crosses seven time zones. Russia spans eleven time zones in total, so when the working day begins in Kaliningrad on the Baltic it is already evening on the Pacific coast.