NAO is a so-called ‘matryoshka’ region in Russia — it is a federation entity and concurrently a part of another federation unit, Arkhangelsk Oblast (province) in the Russian North. NAO’s territory is 176,000 sq. km (more than of Bangladesh or Uruguay) with just 44,000 inhabitants. Arkhangelsk Oblast has 413,000 sq km and 1.1 mln inhabitants; the united region would be larger than France and the biggest territorial unit in the European part of Russia. A notable issue is that NAO is named after the Nenets, a small indigenous people, who comprise approximately 19 percent of the okrug’s population.

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