Russian Speaking Countries || What’s The Truth?

Who Are The Russian Speaking Countries? Fun Facts and Figures

Russia is huge, we all know that right!?

It’s comfortably the biggest country in the world.

DID YOU KNOW || Russia spans 11 timezones in Europe and Asia, spanning from UTC + 2 (Kalingrad) all the way to UTC + 12 (Kamchatka).

But despite it’s geographical size – Russian is not the most spoken language in the world.

In fact it’s not even near the top!

Russian is the 8th most spoken language in the world behind the likes of English, Mandarin Chinese and Bengali.

FUN FACT || There are approximately 258 million Russian speakers worldwide. This includes not only native speakers, but also those who speak Russian as a second language.

For more fun facts and figures, let’s take a deeper dive into the world of Russian speaking countries around the globe.

Russian Speaking Countries || How Many?

Russian Speaking Countries || Russian Native Speakers

Russian Speaking Countries || Russian Speakers Worldwide

Russian Speaking Countries || Top 10 Russian Speaking Countries

Russian Speaking Countries || FAQs

Russian Speaking Countries || How Many?

OK so here’s the deal.

Russian is an official language in four countries. They are:

• Russia
• Belarus
• Kazakhstan
• Kyrgyzstan

Additionally, Russian is widely spoken in 19 other countries as a second/third language, especially in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Europe.

Think countries such as Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Moldova and Latvia.

Whilst it is not recognised as an official language in all of these countries, it is widely used day to day in certain regions.

DID YOU KNOW || Russian is spelt as русский using the Cyrillic Alphabet.

Russian can be confusing for English speakers at first because whilst certain letters are pronounced the same (K, M and T for example) others are not.

When you see a P, it’s pronounced as the English R. Likewise the Russian B is spoken like an English V.

It’s a fun language to learn for sure!

Russian Speaking Countries || Russian Native Speakers

So we already know there are approximately 258 million Russian speakers worldwide…

But how many of these are native Russian speakers?

Care to take a guess?

Check the answer below 👇

Did you guess correctly? Tell us in the comments below.

23 Words in Russian You ALREADY Know || The Power of Loanwords

Loanwords (or words borrowed from other languages) can be found in virtually every language spoken around the world. Today we learn 23 loanwords in Russian.

Russian Speaking Countries || Russian Speakers Worldwide

What about going into more detail by taking a look at a breakdown of Russian speakers worldwide?

Let’s take a look at some countries where Russian is fairly prominent.

Despite the big geographical gap between Moscow and Washington – there are almost 1,000,000 Russian speakers in the US.

In fact there are well over 900,000 to date.

In Canada the situation is fairly similar, with approximately 200,000 individuals who reported Russian as their mother tongue language.

This equates to about 0.5% of the entire population. In America it’s less than 0.01% so Russian would be spoken more in Canada than America if we take population density into account.

According to the European Commission’s Eurobarometer survey in 2012, approximately 6% of the EU population reported being able to speak Russian, which would translate to around 30 million people.

The countries with the largest populations of Russian speakers in Europe include Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia.

Additionally, there are significant Russian-speaking communities in countries like Germany and Turkey.

Israel houses a sizable Russian-speaking population, with roughly 1,000,000 Russian speakers, while nearby Turkey has around 600,000.

China has up to 700,000 Russian speakers, some of which are natives and others who speak Russian as a 2nd language.

Many of these can be found in the Dong Bei (东北) area of China which borders Russia.

Australia has up to 120,000 Russian speakers, and even South America has a few pockets, with about 14,000 speakers in Uruguay and around 30,000 in Argentina.

In Ukraine, ethnic Russians account for 17% of the population, whilst in Kazakhstan they account for 23%.

In both Latvia and Estonia they make up roughly 26%, while in Lithuania they form just 6% of the population.

Russian Speaking Countries || Top 10

Here is a list of the top 10 Russian speaking countries from around the world with the % of the total population shown too.

That concludes our look at Russian speaking countries around the world.

We hope you enjoyed crunching the numbers with us.

If you fancy learning Russian – we run 24/7 live, online lessons with our amazing Flexi Class system.

Come and check it out and get yourself a free 7 day trial to start.

Russian Speaking Countries || FAQs

Want More From LTL?

FANCY LEARNING RUSSIAN? Check out our online Russian courses here.

We offer a 7-day free trial to all online students where you can study Russian 24/7.

Come and be a part of our amazing community.