Telephone system: 24,400,000 telephones; 20,900,000 telephones in
urban areas and 3,500,000 telephones in rural areas; of these, total
installed in homes 15,400,000; total pay phones for long distant calls
34,100; about 164 telephones/1,000 persons; Russia is enlisting
foreign help, by means of joint ventures, to speed up the
modernization of its telecommunications system; in 1992, only 661,000
new telephones were installed compared with 855,000 in 1991, and in
1992 the number of unsatisfied applications for telephones reached
11,000,000; expanded access to international E-mail service available
via Sprint network; the inadequacy of Russian telecommunications is a
severe handicap to the economy, especially with respect to
international connections
local: NMT-450 analog cellular telephone networks are operational and
growing in Moscow and St. Petersburg
intercity: intercity fiberoptic cable installation remains limited
international: international traffic is handled by an inadequate
system of satellites, land lines, microwave radio relay and outdated
submarine cables; this traffic passes through the international
gateway switch in Moscow which carries most of the international
traffic for the other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent
States; a new Russian Raduga satellite will link Moscow and St.
Petersburg with Rome from whence calls will be relayed to destinations
in Europe and overseas; satellite earth stations - INTELSAT,
Intersputnik, Eutelsat (Moscow), INMARSAT, Orbita
Radio:
broadcast stations: AM 1,050, FM 1,050, shortwave 1,050
radios: 48.8 million (radio receivers with multiple speaker systems
for program diffusion 74,300,000)
Television: broadcast stations: 7,183 televisions: 54.2 million
@Russia:Defense Forces
Branches: Ground Forces, Navy, Air Forces, Air Defense Forces,
Strategic Rocket Forces
Manpower availability: males age 15-49 38,264,699; males fit for military service 29,951,977; males reach military age (18) annually 1,106,176 (1995 est.)
Defense expenditures: $NA, NA% of GDP note: the Intelligence Community estimates that defense spending in Russia fell about 15% in real terms in 1994, reducing Russian defense outlays to about one-fourth of peak Soviet levels in the late 1980s; although Russia may still spend as much as 10% of its GDP on defense, this is significantly below the 15% to 17% burden the former USSR carried during much of the 1980s; conversion of military expenditures into US dollars using the current exchange rate could produce misleading results
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RWANDA
@Rwanda:Geography