Modern sovereign republics of Europe, from the large western and central European republics, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Ukraine among them, through the Balkan and Baltic republics that emerged from the twentieth century's collapse of Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union, to the smaller republics of San Marino, Malta and Iceland. The group also includes Russia, whose own recorded description places it in both Eastern Europe and North Asia, grouped here with the European republics rather than a separate Asian group because Europe is the region its own description states first.