Russia alone covers 11.5% of Earth's land, beating second-place Canada by 7.11 million km² — a gap larger than two Indias combined. The top four (Russia, Canada, China, the United States) together exceed the combined area of ranks 5 through 20. The ordering is unusually sensitive to definition: China leads the United States by only about 72,000 km², under 1%, and on the American figure that counts territorial and coastal waters the US moves ahead. Two common misconceptions are worth correcting: Kazakhstan, not Mongolia, is the world's largest landlocked country; and Greenland's 2.17 million km² would place it 12th, except that it is an autonomous territory of Denmark rather than a sovereign state.