Ethnic Russians in post-Soviet states
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in December 1991, about 25 million ethnic Russians in post-Soviet states found themselves living outside of Russia. However, this number declined to less than 6 million today, excluding Ukraine in which ethnic Russian population is hard to estimate due to lack of a recent census.
All former Soviet citizens had a time window within which they could transfer their former Soviet citizenship to Russian citizenship. Where they did not exercise that choice, their resulting citizenship status outside Russia varied by state: from no perceivable change in status – as in Belarus – to becoming permanently resident "non-citizens" – as in Estonia and Latvia, which restricted citizenship to their pre-World War II citizens and their offspring (regardless of ethnic group) upon restoration of their independence in continuity with their sovereign identities prior to June 1940.
In June 2006 Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a plan to introduce national policy aiming at encouraging ethnic Russian immigration to Russia.
| Country | Number of ethnic Russians |
Percent of national population |
As of (census data) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russia1 | 105,579,179 | 80.8 | 2021 |
| Ukraine | 8,334,141 | 17.3 | 2001 |
| Kazakhstan | 2,963,938 | 14.6 | 2025 |
| Uzbekistan | 720,324 | 2.1 | 2021 |
| Belarus | 706,992 | 7.5 | 2019 |
| Latvia1 | 434,243 | 24.1 | 2025 |
| Estonia1 | 285,819 | 21.0 | 2025 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 272,812 | 3.7 | 2025 |
| Lithuania | 144,500 | 5.0 | 2025 |
| Turkmenistan | 114,447 | 1.6 | 2022 |
| Moldova2 | 75,300 | 3.2 | 2024 |
| Azerbaijan | 71,046 | 0.7 | 2019 |
| Tajikistan | 29,000 | 0.3 | 2020 |
| Georgia3 | 26,586 | 0.7 | 2014 |
| Armenia | 14,074 | 0.5 | 2022 |
1: Excluding the population for which data is unknown
2: Does not include Transnistria (2015 census: 138,072 Russians or 29.1% of the population)
3: Does not include Abkhazia (2024 estimate: 22,224 Russians or 9.1% of the population) or South Ossetia (2015 census: 610 Russians or 1.1% of the population)