Russian is the largest Slavic language, spoken by close to 260 million people worldwide.

Every year on 6 June, the United Nations marks the Russian Language Day. The date marks the birthday of Alexander Pushkin, one of Russia’s greatest writers. Pushkin transformed Russian literature by writing in a style that reflected the language spoken by ordinary people, helping shape modern Russian as we know it today.
Here are a few interesting facts about the Russian language.
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, which is originally based on the Greek alphabet with additional letters created for Slavic sounds.
Russian is also one of the languages of space: astronauts aboard the International Space Station learn Russian as part of their training.
The Russian language has more expressions for shades of blue than most other languages!