Where is it? The Jewish Autonomous Oblast, or region, is located in the Russian Far East, bordering on Khabarovsk Krai. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here.

What's the biggest city? Birobidzhan (sometimes written as Birobidjan), population 77,250 as of the 2002 census, out of 190,915 total inhabitants... more

Where is it? Kamchatka Oblast, or region, is a peninsula in the Russian Far East, northeast of Primorye Krai and Khabarovsk Krai and bordered by the Sea of Okhotsk and the Pacific Ocean. It shares a northern border with Magadan Oblast. It is in the same time zone as... more

Where is it? Sakhalin Oblast, or region, is an island located in the Russian Far East, to the east of Primorye Krai and Khabarovsk Krai in the Sea of Okhotsk. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here. China, Japan and Russia have all claimed sovereignty... more

I don’t know why it is that the key conversations in our family seem to occur in traffic. It's not like we spend a lot of time on the road; I probably have fewer miles on my three-year-old car right now than most families have after 12 months.

But you might remember that my older son, who was adopted from Vladivostok, started asking questions about his birth mother... more

When I went to Vladivostok in November 1999 for my first adoption, you could fly from Seattle to the Russian Far East on Aeroflot. It wasn't a non-stop; I've done fewer stops on most of the puddle-jumpers I've flown. After leaving Seattle, the flight landed in Anchorage, then Magadan, Khabarovsk and finally Vladivostok.... more

Maybe, just maybe, this week brought us one step closer to a better relationship between the United States and Russia.

Yesterday, after weeks of heated exchanges between Washington and Moscow over America's plans for installing a missile defense system in eastern Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with a surprise. Rather than base the system in the former Warsaw pact countries of Poland and the Czech Republic, Putin told Washington, put it in Azerbaijan. And, according to the... more

Where is it? Magadan Oblast, or region, is located in the Russian Far East north of Primorye Krai and Khabarovsk Krai along the Sea of Okhotsk. Prior to Stalin's death the region was known as Kolyma. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here.

What's the biggest city? Magadan, population 99,399 as of the 2002 census, out of 182,726 total inhabitants in the region.

Who lives... more

Where is it? Khabarovsk Krai, or region, is located in the Russian Far East just north of Primorye Krai along the Sea of Okhotsk. It is in the same time zone as Vladivostok. You can find the current local time here.

What's the biggest city? Khabarovsk, which is a major Pacific Ocean port and the second biggest city in the Russian Far East after Vladivostok. Like Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, population 579,000, grew up along the... more

Where is it? The Primorye Krai, or region, is located on the Pacific Ocean at Russia's far eastern edge.

What's the biggest city? Vladivostok, which is the home to Russia's Pacific Fleet and Russian's biggest Pacific Ocean port. Because of the naval operations, Stalin closed Vladivostok off from the world, and it remained so until 1991. Nakhodka (also written as Nahodka) is the second-largest city.

Who lives here? Mostly ethnic Russians. But there are Korean and... more

Where is it? Arkhangelsk Oblast, or region, is about 600 miles north of Moscow, just shy of the Arctic Circle. It has nearly 2,000 miles of coastline on the Barents, Kara and White seas. It is in the same time zone as Moscow.

What's the biggest city? Arkhangelsk city accounts for 356,051 of the 1,336,539 people in the region. Other big cities are Severodvinsk (once known as Molotovsk after Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's foreign affairs minister and creator of the eponymous incendiary device), which... more