Russian

211M people can hold a conversation in Russian across 25 countries; official in 5.

Data as of 28 Oct 2026 · ISO 639-3 rus · Glottolog russ1263 · Indo-European · CLDR 49, Glottolog 5.3, States sheet

Where Russian is spoken

Share of each country's people who can hold a conversation in it.

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Small territories are not drawn at this scale.

Countries

Share of the population and people who can hold a conversation in it, by country.

How this is measured

Most figures are CLDR's estimates of speakers. CLDR lists only each country's larger languages, so where it has no figure a national census or official survey fills in, and the Figure column says which and what it counts. A home-language figure is a floor: more people can speak the language than use it at home.

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Russia

official

99%

145M

Kazakhstan

official

72%

14.8M

Ukraine

de facto

46%

13.2M

Poland

none

18%

6.7M

Belarus

official

71%

6.4M

Uzbekistan

none

14%

5.5M

Germany

none

6.0%

5.0M

Kyrgyzstan

official

36%

2.7M

Lithuania

none

80%

2.3M

Armenia

none

65%

2.0M

Bulgaria

none

23%

1.5M

Tajikistan

none

12%

1.3M

#	Country			Status	Figure
1	Russia	99%	145M	official	CLDR
2	Kazakhstan	72%	14.8M	official	CLDR
3	Ukraine	46%	13.2M	de facto	CLDR
4	Poland	18%	6.7M	none	CLDR
5	Belarus	71%	6.4M	official	CLDR
6	Uzbekistan	14%	5.5M	none	CLDR
7	Germany	6.0%	5.0M	none	CLDR
8	Kyrgyzstan	36%	2.7M	official	CLDR
9	Lithuania	80%	2.3M	none	CLDR
10	Armenia	65%	2.0M	none	CLDR
11	Bulgaria	23%	1.5M	none	CLDR
12	Tajikistan	12%	1.3M	none	CLDR
13	Israel	11%	1.1M	none	CLDR
14	Turkmenistan	12%	847K	none	CLDR
15	United States	0.2%	820K	none	CLDR
16	Estonia	56%	762K	none	CLDR
17	Latvia	38%	697K	none	CLDR
18	Georgia	9.0%	355K	none	CLDR
19	Canada	0.8%	352K	none	CLDR
20	Moldova	3.0%	71K	none	CLDR
21	Australia	0.2%	61K	none	Census, home language
22	Finland	0.8%	46K	none	CLDR
23	Mongolia	0.1%	4K	none	CLDR
24	China	0.0%	0	none	CLDR
25	Svalbard & Jan Mayen	41%	—	none	CLDR

States where it is the first language

States whose first language is this one, largest population first.

13.0M

8.5M

5.8M

5.6M

4.3M

4.2M

4.2M

4.1M

4.0M

3.4M

3.2M

3.2M

#	State	Country
1	Moscow	Russia	13,010,112
2	Moscow Oblast	Russia	8,524,665
3	Krasnodar Krai	Russia	5,838,273
4	Saint Petersburg	Russia	5,601,911
5	Sverdlovsk Oblast	Russia	4,268,998
6	Rostov Oblast	Russia	4,200,729
7	Donetsk	Ukraine	4,157,000
8	Bashkortostan	Russia	4,091,423
9	Tatarstan	Russia	4,004,809
10	Chelyabinsk Oblast	Russia	3,431,224
11	Dagestan	Russia	3,182,054
12	Samara Oblast	Russia	3,172,925
13	Nizhny Novgorod Oblast	Russia	3,119,115
14	Stavropol Krai	Russia	2,907,593
15	Krasnoyarsk Krai	Russia	2,856,971
16	Novosibirsk Oblast	Russia	2,797,176
17	Kemerovo Oblast	Russia	2,600,923
18	Perm Krai	Russia	2,532,405
19	Volgograd Oblast	Russia	2,500,781
20	Saratov Oblast	Russia	2,442,575
21	Irkutsk Oblast	Russia	2,370,102
22	Voronezh Oblast	Russia	2,308,792
23	Altai Krai	Russia	2,163,693
24	Luhansk	Ukraine	2,145,000
25	Minsk	Belarus	2,009,786
26	Minsk	Belarus	2,009,786
27	Leningrad Oblast	Russia	2,000,997
28	Crimea	Russia	1,934,630
29	Orenburg Oblast	Russia	1,862,767
30	Omsk Oblast	Russia	1,858,798
31	Primorsky Krai	Russia	1,845,165
32	Khanty-Mansi-Yugra	Russia	1,711,480
33	Tyumen Oblast	Russia	1,601,940
34	Belgorod Oblast	Russia	1,540,486
35	Chechnya	Russia	1,510,824
36	Tula Oblast	Russia	1,501,214
37	Udmurtia	Russia	1,452,914
38	Gomel	Belarus	1,375,286
39	Vladimir Oblast	Russia	1,348,134
40	Brest	Belarus	1,338,044
41	Khabarovsk Krai	Russia	1,292,944
42	Penza Oblast	Russia	1,266,348
43	Tver Oblast	Russia	1,230,171
44	Yaroslavl Oblast	Russia	1,209,811
45	Ulyanovsk Oblast	Russia	1,196,745
46	Chuvashia	Russia	1,186,909
47	Bryansk Oblast	Russia	1,169,161
48	Kirov Oblast	Russia	1,153,680
49	Lipetsk Oblast	Russia	1,143,224
50	Vologda Oblast	Russia	1,142,827

Family

Where it sits in the Glottolog tree, root to language.

Indo-European
Classical Indo-European
Balto-Slavic
Slavic
East Slavic
Russian

Indo-European: 216 languages, 5.95B speakers.

Where these numbers come from

Unicode CLDR territoryInfo (release 49) (Unicode License v3). Country-level language shares, official status and Tier 3 reach (populationPercent is total speakers, first plus second language).
Glottolog 5.3 (CC BY 4.0). Language names, ISO 639-3 codes, families.
Database of International and Intranational Linguistic distances (DICL v2), USITC (CC BY 4.0). Country-pair linguistic proximity (loaded, not yet shown in release one).
States (ISO 3166-2) sheet, MetroAreas workbook (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation). States, populations and the four language labels per state.
Natural Earth 1:110m Admin 0 Countries (nvkelso/natural-earth-vector) (Public domain). World outline for the language maps (world-110m.geojson, properties reduced to iso3 and name).
Country layer of this site (countries.json workbook population, World Bank iso2 and iso3, OWID country-population) (Citizen of Nowhere, own compilation; World Bank CC BY 4.0; OWID CC BY). Country population, iso2 and /countries slug joined onto languages, countries and families (speakers = share x population).

Definitions are on the Method page.