Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations and the Russian Federation.

Russian belongs to the East Slavic branch of Slavic language family. It is mainly used in Russia and other member states of the former Soviet Union. In Warsaw Treaty Member States, it was widely used as the first foreign language teaching in schools. During the period of the Soviet Union, Russian was greatly emphasized in its republics. Although many countries in the former Soviet Union now begin to emphasize the importance of the local language, Russian is still the most widely used language in these areas, and it is also the language used by these countries for communication. Norwegian Russian is a mixture of Russian and Norwegian. It is the only official language of Russia and one of the official languages of Kazakhstan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan.