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General Information Area: 17,075,400 sq km (6,592,850 sq miles). Population: 146,693,000 (1999). Population Density: 8.6 per sq km. Capital: Moscow. Population: 8,299,000 (2000). GEOGRAPHY: The Russian Federation covers almost twice the area of the USA, and reaches from Moscow in the west over the Urals and the vast Siberian plains to the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. The border between European Russia and Siberia (Asia) is formed by the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the Manych Depression. European Russia extends from the North Polar Sea across the Central Russian Uplands to the Black Sea, the Northern Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. Siberia stretches from the West Siberian Plain across the Central Siberian Plateau between Yenisey and Lena, including the Sayan, Yablonovy and Stanovoy ranges in the south to the East Siberian mountains between Lena and the Pacific coast including the Chukotskiy and Kamchatka peninsulas. POPULATION FIGURES: The following republics are part of the Russian Federation. Population figures were drawn up in 1999. Republic Area (sq km) Population (000’s) Capital Adygheya 7600 449 Maikop Altai 92,600 203 Gorno-Altaisk Bashkortostan 143,600 4110 Ufa Buryatia 351,300 1053 Ulan-Ude Chechnyat* N/A 781 Grozny Chuvashia 18,300 1362 Cheboksary Daghestan 50,300 2120 Makhachkala Ingushetia* N/A 317 Magas Kabardino-Balkariya 12,500 786 Nalchik Kalmykiya 75,900 316 Elista Karachayevo-Cherkessiya 14,100 434 Cherkessk Kareliya 172,400 771 Petrozavodsk Khakassiya 61,900 581 Abakan Komi 415,900 1151 Syktyvkar Marii-El 23,200 761 Yoshkar-Ola Mordoviya 26,200 937 Saransk Northern Osetiya (Alaniya) 8000 663 Vladikavkaz Sakha (Yakutiya) 3,103,200 1001 Yakutsk Tatarstan 68,000 3784 Kazan Tyva 170,500 311 Kyzyl Udmurtiya 42,100 1633 Izhevsk Note: *Until 1992, the territories of the Republic of Chechnya and the Ingush Republic were combined in the Chechen-Ingush autonomous republic (area 19,300 sq km). Government: Republic since 1991. Head of Government: President Vladimir Putin since 2000. Language: Russian. English, French or German are spoken by some people. Religion: Mainly Christian with the Russian Orthodox Church being the largest Christian community. Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish minorities also exist. TIME: Russia is divided into 11 time zones. Summer time is + 1 from last Sunday in March to Saturday before last Sunday in October. Kaliningrad GMT + 2. Moscow, St Petersburg, Astrakhan GMT + 3. Izhevsk and Samara GMT + 4. Perm – Nizhnevartovsk GMT + 5. Omsk and Novosibirsk GMT + 6. Norilsk, Kyzyl GMT + 7. Bratsk – Ulan Ude GMT + 8. Chita, Yakutsk GMT + 9. Khabarovsk, Vladivostok GMT + 10. Magadan, Yuzhno Sakhalinsk GMT + 11. Petropavlosk GMT + 12. Electricity: 220 volts AC, 50Hz. Communications:   Telephone IDD is available. Country code: 7. When dialling the Russian Federation from abroad, the 0 of the area code must not be omitted. Outgoing international code: 810. Some Moscow hotels have telephone booths with IDD. For long-distance calls within the CIS, dial 8 then wait for the dial tone before proceeding with the call. Collect calls, calls placed using credit cards and calls from direct dial telephones in hotels can be extremely expensive. The emergency services can be reached as follows: fire – 01; police – 02; ambulance – 03. For enquiries regarding Moscow private telephone numbers, dial 09; for businesses, 927 0009. For national directory enquiries regarding the Russian Federation and the CIS, dial 927 0009. Mobile telephone GSM 900/1800 networks. Network operators include KB Impuls (website: www.beeline.gsm.ru) and Mobile Telesystems (website: www.mts.ru). All major cities are covered by at least one operator. Handsets can be hired from some companies. Fax Services are available in numerous business centres and hotels, although the latter option is more expensive. Internet ISPs include Beeonline (website: www.beeonline.ru) and Russiaonline (website: www.online.ru). Public access is available in hotels in larger cities and in Internet cafes. Telegram These may be sent from hotels. Post Airmail to Western Europe takes over ten days. There are postboxes and post offices in every hotel. Poste Restante facilities are available at the larger hotels. Inland surface mail is often slow. Post office hours: 0900-1900. Press The main dailies in the Russian Federation are Komsomolskaya Pravda and Izvestiya, both published in Moscow. Newspapers and magazines are published in some 25 languages. Multi-lingual editions of the Moscow News are available weekly. The Moscow Times and St Petersburg Times are published in English. There is also a daily Internet newspaper, Russia Today (website: www.russiatoday.com). BBC World Service and Voice of America frequencies: From time to time these change. BBC (website: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice): MHz 15.28 11.95 9.740 6.195 Voice of America (website: www.voa.gov): MHz1 17.74 11.71 9.645 6.110 From www.columbusguides.com, Copyright © 2004 Highbury Columbus Travel Publishing Terms and Conditions apply.