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Countries and territories where Russian is an official language

  • BashkortostanBashkortostan sits wedged between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains, a republic the size of a small country that most people in the world have never…
  • ChechnyaChechnya sits wedged between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in a corner of Eastern Europe that has refused, for centuries, to be governed by anyone who…
  • DagestanDagestan holds a distinction that most people would never guess: it is the southernmost tip of Russia, a republic that shares borders not just with fellow…
  • Zabaykalsky KraiZabaykalsky Krai stretches across the Russian Far East, touching China and Mongolia with its vast international boundaries.
  • IngushetiaIngushetia holds a distinction that defies easy explanation: it is one of the poorest, most conflict-scarred republics in Russia, and yet, as of 2017, it…
  • BuryatiaBuryatia sits at a crossroads that few maps quite capture. The Republic of Buryatia borders Mongolia to the south, and to its north lies Lake Baikal, the…
  • TuvaTuva sits at the geographical center of Asia, a republic within Russia that most of the world has never heard of. Physicist Richard Feynman became so…
  • TajikistanTajikistan sits wedged between Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and China, a landlocked country where more than 90% of the land is mountain.
  • SevastopolSevastopol sits at the southwestern tip of the Crimean peninsula, and for more than two centuries it has never stopped being fought over.
  • KazakhstanKazakhstan is the largest landlocked country on Earth, a place where you can stand west of the Ural River in Europe, then travel east into Asia without…
  • AbkhaziaAbkhazia covers 8,665 square kilometres on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, yet most of the world does not recognise it exists as a country.
  • South OssetiaSouth Ossetia sits in a narrow fold of the Caucasus Mountains, covering just 3,900 square kilometres and home to just over 56,500 people.
  • Krasnodar KraiKrasnodar Krai sits at one of the most contested crossroads on earth. It is a Russian federal subject where steppe grasslands give way to mountains, where…
  • Ukrainian Soviet Socialist RepublicThe Bolsheviks convened a separate congress and declared the first Soviet Republic of Ukraine on the 24th of December 1917.
  • KalmykiaKalmykia is the only place in Europe where Buddhism is the majority religion. Tucked into the steppes of southern Russia, this republic of roughly 275,000…
  • Sakha RepublicThe Sakha Republic covers more than 3,083,523 square kilometres of the Russian Far East, making it the single largest country subdivision on Earth.
  • Jewish Autonomous OblastThe Jewish Autonomous Oblast sits in Russia's far east, a place where Yiddish street signs stand in a region that is now less than one percent Jewish.
  • Komi RepublicThe Komi Republic sits in the northeast of European Russia, a territory larger than Germany, where forests cover more than 70% of the land and winter…
  • Republic of Crimea (Russia)In February 2014, Russian leadership decided to start working on returning Crimea to Russia following the Ukrainian revolution that ousted President Viktor…
  • Republics of the Soviet UnionThe Republics of the Soviet Union were described in the 1977 constitution as "sovereign Soviet socialist states" that had freely chosen to unite into one…
  • Russian-occupied territoriesThe 1992 battle of Bender turned the Dniester river into a blood-soaked boundary. Russian military intervention in June 1992 secured victory for separatists…
  • Russian Soviet Federative Socialist RepublicThe Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic was proclaimed on the 7th of November 1917, hours after Bolshevik forces overthrew the provisional…
  • Byelorussian Soviet Socialist RepublicThe Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic spent most of the twentieth century as a place other powers fought over, traded away, and occasionally forgot.
  • Kaliningrad OblastKaliningrad Oblast holds roughly 90 percent of the world's amber deposits, which is why many Russians call it the Amber Land.
  • Soviet UnionOn the 26th of December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union, ending nearly seven decades of Soviet rule.
  • RussiaRussia spans eleven time zones. No other country on Earth does. Its borders touch fourteen nations, its coastline is the world's fourth-longest at over…
  • Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire announced itself to the world on the day the Treaty of Nystad was signed in 1721, when the Governing Senate and Synod bestowed upon Peter…
  • BelarusBelarus sits at the crossroads of Eastern Europe, a landlocked country of 9.1 million people spanning 207,600 square kilometres, bordered by Russia, Ukraine…
  • Federal subjects of RussiaThe Constitution of Russia, adopted by federal referendum on the 12th of December 1993 and coming into force on the 25th of December 1993, defines the…