Country profilesRussia

Humanitarian profile

Russia regards the former Soviet Union as its sphere of influence and maintains close ties with the region. It has been increasing donations for global development, with most of the aid directed to its erstwhile satellite states and Africa. A member of the Group of Eight club of rich countries, Russia was itself hit by deadly forest fires in 2010 and received almost half a million dollars in emergency aid from several nearby countries. Russia is one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Country snapshot

Since the end of the Cold War, Russia has rebuilt its influence through its supplies of hydro-carbons. Russia is the globe's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia and supplies Europe with a quarter of its gas needs, which are highest during Europe's freezing winters. Thanks to its energy resources, Russia has also been able to build one of the world's biggest cash funds - a vital buffer for its economy in difficult times.

Russia can equally exert influence across the world through its large army and military technology. But both need modernising. Most notably there have been several high-profile accidents involving submarines, including the sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk in 2000 when 118 sailors died.

Russia is one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and can veto substantive resolutions. China and Russia often take an opposing viewpoint to the other permanent members - the United States, Britain and France.

Relations between Russia and NATO, which has expanded to include former Soviet states, are tense. In 2008, Russia crushed an assault by U.S. ally Georgia on Georgia's rebel South Ossetia region. Russia went on to recognise South Ossetia and Georgia's other breakaway region, Abkhazia, as independent states.

Government

Russians directly elect a president who then picks a prime minister and approves a government. The presidential term is currently set for four years but was extended to six years in late 2008 and is due to go into effect after the 2012 presidential election.

In 2008 former corporate lawyer Dmitry Medvedev became Russian president.

Widely viewed to be a protégé of former president Vladimir Putin, he appointed Putin as prime minister. Putin was president between 2000 and 2008 and is credited with disciplining a chaotic post-Soviet Russia. Kremlin watchers say that both Medvedev and Putin may want to be president after 2012.

Parliament is also directly elected. Putin heads the United Russia group which dominates parliament. The main pro-Kremlin television channels give United Russia positive coverage, a vital tool for influencing public opinion. The Communists maintain some support, especially among the elderly. Small, more radical opposition groups have been marginalised and reduced to staging noisy street protests.

Regional governors are nominated by the president and then confirmed by regional legislatures. The president can dissolve a legislature if it rejects his nominee.

Economy

Oil and gas sales underpin Russia's economy and drove a boom in living standards through the first years of the 21st century from an immediate post-Soviet slump.

Russia's economy is so sensitive to oil that its rouble currency often moves up and down with energy prices.

The country is also one of the world's top producers of palladium and nickel. Many of the companies extracting metals and minerals are controlled by billionaire businessmen known as oligarchs.

The global financial collapse of 2008 exposed the structural weakness of Russia's economy. Its stock market dropped by around 70 percent in 2008 and the rouble fell 17 percent against the dollar and euro basket. The Russian government had to spend billions of dollars from its reserve fund to prop up heavily indebted businesses. The fallout renewed calls for Russia to diversify its economy but any progress is likely to be slow. Disputes over ownership of assets worry foreign investors who say that the rule of law in Russia is not strong enough.

Russia is one of the world's biggest economies but the bulk of the wealth is held by only a few people who mainly live in Moscow. This has created a stark gap between Russia's rich and poor and between Moscow and the rest of the country.

History

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russians had to borrow money from the United States to buy U.S. farm goods, watch their currency and their savings collapse and cope with spiralling violence on their streets. When Putin came to power, he set about reconstructing Russia.

Putin's brand of leadership relied on discipline and re-asserting Russia's pride. As prime minister under an ailing President Boris Yeltsin, who had allowed the oligarchs to consolidate their power and wealth, he pursued a second war in the rebellious southern region of Chechnya, which had pushed out Russian soldiers three years earlier. He also imposed Kremlin control over the oligarchs. With his connections in the secret services, Putin realigned the security services towards the centre of Russian politics.

Importantly for Russians, he also re-instated Russia on the international stage, made important economic and military deals with growing economies such as India and Venezuela and opposed NATO expansion towards Russia's borders. Russia considers the former Soviet states on its borders to be in its sphere of influence, as was most notably demonstrated by the brief war with Georgia in August 2008 over its rebel region of South Ossetia. Ukraine and the Baltic states are also sources of tension.

A rebel insurgency smoulders on in Russia's north Caucasus region, centred around Chechnya. Putin has empowered loyal local warlords, allowing Russian soldiers to move to the fringes of the battle against the insurgents. They have hunted down many rebels but a Kremlin declaration that a 10-year campaign to defeat the rebels had been won in 2009 appeared premature later in the year when rebel attacks rose.

Legal snapshot

Foreign investors regularly cite corruption and a weak legal system as a worry in Russia. In its corruption perception index, Transparency International rates Russia in the lowest quartile alongside countries such as Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe and Cameroon. Medvedev has spoken several times on the need to tackle corruption and parliament has passed a series of anti-corruption laws but those are yet to produce tangible results.

"Lack of transparency, poor corporate governance, bureaucratic red tape and the predominance of personalised politics are the defining characteristics of investment in Russia," Eurasia Group analyst Kim Iskyan said in 2009. In several high-profile business disputes, Russian businesses have pressured foreign investors through the courts. These include British oil company BP, U.S.-based Bank of New York Mellon and Norwegian telecoms firm Telenor. Lawyers have been targets of violence. In the north Caucasus, gunmen have killed judges and prosecutors.