The Cyrillic script, Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia, and used by many other minority languages.
Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, encompassing one-eighth of Earth's inhabitable landmass. Russia extends across eleven time zones and shares land boundaries with fourteen countries. It is the world's ninth-most populous country and Europe's most populous country. The country's capital and largest city is Moscow. Saint Petersburg is Russia's cultural centre and second-largest city. Other major urban areas in the country include Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, and Kazan.
Russian is an East Slavic language mainly spoken in Russia. It is the native language of the Russians and belongs to the Indo-European language family. It is one of four living East Slavic languages, and is also a part of the larger Balto-Slavic languages. It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union. Russian has remained an official language in independent Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel.
Siberia is an extensive geographical region comprising all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has formed part of the sovereign territory of Russia and its various predecessor states since the centuries-long conquest of Siberia, which began with the fall of the Khanate of Sibir in the late 16th century and concluded with the annexation of Chukotka in 1778. Siberia is vast and sparsely populated, covering an area of over 13.1 million square kilometres (5,100,000 sq mi), but home to only one-fifth of Russia's population. Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Chelyabinsk are the largest cities in the area.
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. It is also bordered by Belarus to the north; by Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; and by Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Dnipro, Kharkiv, and Odesa. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian; Russian is also widely spoken, especially in the east and south.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer serving as the current president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012.
The T-90 is a third-generation Russian main battle tank developed from the T-72. It uses a 125 mm 2A46 smoothbore main gun, the 1A45T fire-control system, an upgraded engine, and gunner's thermal sight. Standard protective measures include a blend of steel and composite armour, smoke grenade dischargers, Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armour (ERA) and the Shtora infrared anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) jamming system.
The romanization of the Russian language, aside from its primary use for including Russian names and words in text written in a Latin alphabet, is also essential for computer users to input Russian text who either do not have a keyboard or word processor set up for inputting Cyrillic, or else are not capable of typing rapidly using a native Russian keyboard layout (JCUKEN). In the latter case, they would type using a system of transliteration fitted for their keyboard layout, such as for English QWERTY keyboards, and then use an automated tool to convert the text into Cyrillic.
The Federal State Statistics Service is the governmental statistics agency in Russia.
Yandex LLC is a Russian multinational technology company providing Internet-related products and services, including an Internet search engine, launched in 1997, information services, e-commerce, transportation, maps and navigation, mobile applications, and online advertising. Yandex holding company was incorporated in 2000. As of 2016, it primarily served audiences in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States of the former Soviet Union,
Yekaterinburg Time (YEKT) is the time zone five hours ahead of UTC (UTC+05:00) and 2 hours ahead of Moscow Time (MSK+2).
Nikolai Gustavovich Legat was a premier dancer with the Russian Imperial Ballet from 1888 to 1914, and also with the Mariinsky Ballet. Both he and his younger brother, Sergey, became ballet masters and caricaturists.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup was the 21st FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Russia from 14 June to 15 July 2018, after the country was awarded the hosting rights in 2010. It was the eleventh time the championships had been held in Europe, and the first time they were held in Eastern Europe. At an estimated cost of over $14.2 billion, it was the most expensive World Cup ever held until it was surpassed by the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
The Russo-Ukrainian War, previously referred to as the Ukrainian crisis in its early stages, is an ongoing international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists, and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Mueller special counsel investigation was an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies, and possible obstruction of justice by Trump and his associates. The investigation was conducted by special prosecutor Robert Mueller from May 2017 to March 2019. It was also called the Russia investigation, the Mueller probe, and the Mueller investigation. The Mueller investigation culminated with the Mueller report, which concluded that though the Trump campaign welcomed Russian interference and expected to benefit from it, there was insufficient evidence of a criminal conspiracy to charge members of the campaign. The report did not reach a conclusion about possible obstruction of justice by Trump, citing a Justice Department guideline that prohibits the federal indictment of a sitting president. The investigation resulted in charges against 34 individuals and 3 companies, 8 guilty pleas, and a conviction at trial.
The COVID-19 pandemic was confirmed to have reached Sevastopol in March 2020. The Russian government includes the cases in Sevastopol in the count of cases in Russia.
CoviVac is an inactivated virus-based COVID-19 vaccine developed by the Chumakov Centre, which is an institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was approved for use in Russia in February 2021, being the third COVID-19 vaccine to get approval in Russia. It obtained a permission for phase III clinical trial on 2 June 2021.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War which began in 2014. The invasion has killed tens of thousands on both sides, with Russian troops causing mass civilian casualties and captured Ukrainian soldiers reporting frequent torture. By June 2022, about 8 million Ukrainians were internally displaced. More than 8.2 million fled the country by May 2023, Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Extensive environmental damage, widely described as ecocide, contributed to the 2022 food crises.
