Short answers, pulled from the story.
Russia holds more than a fifth of all the world's forests, making it the largest forest country on the planet. As of 2015, the total forest area exceeded 885 million hectares, covering 45 percent of Russia's total land surface, with a wood stock of 82 billion cubic meters.
Russia's timber industry is valued at approximately 20 billion dollars per year. As of 2022, Russia ranked as the second largest producer of industrial roundwood in the world, though its share of global trade in forest products is less than 4 percent.
Ilim Group held both the largest net benefit and the largest total revenue among the Top 50 Russian forest industry companies in 2008, with total revenue of 37.92 billion rubles. Leading exporters of sawed timber in early 2010 included Lesosibirsk LDK of Segezha Group, Ust-Ilim Timber Processing Plant, Novoyeniseysk LHK, Sawmill-25, and Svir Timber.
China is the largest single destination for Russian lumber, taking 19 percent of export volume in the first quarter of 2010. Other major destinations include Egypt, Uzbekistan, Japan, and Iran, with Northern Europe receiving a significant share of pulp and paper exports.
The decline resulted from two combined pressures: the Russian government raised export duties on roundwood by 20 percent in July 2007 and by 25 percent in April 2008, reducing competitiveness abroad. At the same time, the global economic crisis caused construction to fall sharply in Japan, China, and Western Europe, cutting demand for wood. Timber volume in Russia fell by 14.4 percent in 2008 compared to the previous year.
Forest Club participants at the St. Petersburg International Forestry Forum in 2011 identified rising fuel prices, transport and logistics difficulties, contested auction regulations for forest leases, no coherent foreign trade framework, and the absence of an investment methodology as key obstacles. A structural constraint is the prohibition on private ownership of forest land, which limits the kind of distributed capital investment seen in countries like the United States.