Russia

Russia, formally the Russian Federation (Rossiyskaya Federatsiya), is the world's largest sovereign state, spanning roughly 17.1 million km² across eleven time zones from Kaliningrad to the Bering Strait. It emerged as the legal continuator of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics following the latter's dissolution on 26 December 1991, inheriting the USSR's permanent seat on the UN Security Council, its nuclear arsenal, and its external debt and treaty obligations. Its governing charter is the Constitution of 1993, adopted by referendum on 12 December 1993 after President Boris Yeltsin's violent confrontation with the Supreme Soviet, establishing a semi-presidential system with a strong executive. Constitutional amendments approved in a nationwide vote on 1 July 2020 reset presidential term limits, enabling Vladimir Putin — president since 2000 (with the 2008–2012 Medvedev interregnum during which Putin served as prime minister) — to potentially remain in office until 2036.

Russia's foreign and strategic posture is anchored in its great-power identity, energy leverage as a leading exporter of oil and natural gas, and a vast strategic-weapons inventory governed by arms-control instruments such as New START (signed 2010; Russia suspended participation in February 2023). It co-founded the Commonwealth of Independent States (1991), the Collective Security Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union (2015), and is a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and BRICS, hosting the BRICS summit in Kazan in October 2024. Its post-Soviet conduct in the "near abroad" includes the 2008 war with Georgia, the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 following the Euromaidan revolution, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched on 24 February 2022 — actions condemned in UN General Assembly Resolution ES-11/1 (2 March 2022) and met with sweeping Western sanctions and the International Criminal Court's March 2023 arrest warrant for Putin.

Historically, Russia is central to the modern-history syllabus through the Tsarist autocracy of the Romanovs, the February and October Revolutions of 1917 led by Lenin's Bolsheviks, the formation of the USSR (1922), Stalinist industrialisation and the Cold War rivalry with the United States. For China-focused papers, Russia matters through the unequal treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) that ceded Outer Manchuria, the Comintern's role in founding the Chinese Communist Party (1921), Soviet aid and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship (1950), and the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s — culminating in the contemporary Moscow–Beijing "no limits" partnership declared in February 2022. As of 2026, Russia remains internationally isolated from the West yet deepens ties with China, India, Iran and North Korea.

For exam purposes, Russia recurs in international-relations and world-affairs papers (BCS "Bangladesh and the World", FSOT, UPSC GS-II) and modern-history sections. Typical question angles test the 1917 Revolution's causes and significance, the dynamics of the Sino-Soviet relationship, UNSC veto politics, the legality of the Crimea and Ukraine actions under the UN Charter, and Russia's energy diplomacy and BRICS role. Candidates should master dated treaties, resolution numbers, and the distinction between the USSR and the Russian Federation.