# Speakers
|
%
|
Country
|
118,581,514
|
85.7
|
Russia
|
14,273,670
|
29.6
|
Ukraine
|
6,672,964
|
70.2
|
Belarus
|
3,793,800
|
21.2
|
Kazakhstan
|
2,257,000
|
2.80
|
Germany
|
1,155,960
|
15.0
|
Israel
|
900,205
|
0.30
|
United States
|
698,757
|
33.8
|
Latvia
|
|
# Speakers
|
%
|
Country
|
482,200
|
8.90
|
Kyrgyzstan
|
383,118
|
29.6
|
Estonia
|
305,802
|
5.40
|
Turkmenistan
|
264,162
|
9.70
|
Moldova
|
218,383
|
7.20
|
Lithuania
|
122,449
|
1.40
|
Azerbaijan
|
112,150
|
0.30
|
Canada
|
77,177
|
1.40
|
Finland
|
|
On a (third?) hand... if Europeans countries had been nicer to Jewish people then there might not even be an Israel, or it might be smaller in area and population, or it might be majority Sephardic or at any rate not so full of recent immigrants and their descendants. You can play the "what if?" game forever.
These Wikipedia articles are woefully inaccurate. Apparently Italy has a higher percent of total English speakers then South Africa. But when on the ground it's hard to find a South African that doesn't speak english, while in Italy it's hard to find someone who speaks englsh.
What comes to Italy, it's the new France (if you know what I mean).
Most of them are descendants of germans wo emigrated to russia in the 18th and early 19th century.
In the 20th century, especially after the russian revolution and even more after WW2, they faced hostility and presecution in Russia, not unalike what jewish russians experienced that time.
So most of the people with german ancestors left Russia and most of them came to Germany, that offered a lot of practical and financial help for the "Spätaussiedler".
This was - and still is - not without problems, but it seems that the russians do much better in the matter of integration than many other emigrants, they don't look very different and cultural differences are also smaller compared to emigrants from the Arabic world or Africa.
Nevertheless, although statistics say there are about 2.5 million people with russian ancestors in Germany, I doubt that all of them can be counted as native russian speakers.