East Slavic language in the context of "Russian-language"

Belarusians (Belarusian: беларусы, romanized: biełarusy [bʲeɫaˈrusɨ]) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Belarus. They natively speak Belarusian, an East Slavic language. More than 9 million people proclaim Belarusian ethnicity worldwide. Nearly 7.99 million Belarusians reside in Belarus, with the United States and Russia being home to more than 500,000 Belarusians each. The majority of Belarusians adhere to Eastern Orthodoxy.

Russian is an East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is the native language of the Russians. It was the de facto and de jure official language of the former Soviet Union. Russian has remained an official language of the Russian Federation, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and is still commonly used as a lingua franca in Ukraine, Moldova, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and to a lesser extent in the Baltic states and Israel.

Russian has over 253 million total speakers worldwide. It is the most spoken native language in Europe, the most spoken Slavic language, and the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia. It is the world's seventh-most spoken language by number of native speakers, and the world's ninth-most spoken language by total number of speakers. Russian is one of two official languages aboard the International Space Station, one of the six official languages of the United Nations, as well as the fourth most widely used language on the Internet.