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Russia - the largest country on earth - emerged from a decade of post-Soviet economic and political turmoil to seek to reassert itself as a world power.

Income from vast natural resources, above all oil and gas, helped Russia overcome the economic collapse of 1998, but the oil price slump of 2014 ended the long run of prosperity.

Vladimir Putin has been Russia's dominant political figure since his election as president in 2000, serving two terms and then a four-year stint as prime minister, before resuming the presidency in 2012 and winning re-elections in 2018 and 2024.

Putin has enhanced his control over state institutions and the media, a process supplemented more recently by an emphasis on fierce nationalism and hostility to the West. The mid-2010s onwards have seen a dramatic downturn in Russian relations with the West, with some considering it the start of a new Cold War.

In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an attempt to re-assert Russian control over the neighbouring country, the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties.

In 2023, the Kremlin unveiled an anti-Western foreign policy strategy, defining Russia as a "unique country-civilization and a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power" seeking closer relations with China, India, the Islamic world, Latin America and southern Africa, in opposition to the US and its allies.
Source: BBC.com