Military manpower - military age: 18 years of age
Military manpower - availability: males age 15-49: 38,449,126 (1997 est.)
Military manpower - fit for military service: males : 29,996,967 (1997 est.)
Military manpower - reaching military age annually: males: 1,115,858 (1997 est.)
Military expenditures - dollar figure: $NA note : the Intelligence Community estimates that defense spending in Russia fell by about 10% in real terms in 1996, reducing Russian defense outlays to about one-sixth of peak Soviet levels in the late 1980s (1997 est.)
Military expenditures - percent of GDP: NA%
Transnational Issues
Disputes - international: inherited disputes from former USSR including sections of the boundary with China; islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, and Shikotan and the Habomai group occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, administered by Russia, claimed by Japan; Caspian Sea boundaries are not yet determined among Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan; potential dispute with Ukraine over Crimea; Estonian and Russian negotiators reached a technical order agreement in December 1996, which Estonia is prepared to sign and ratify in January 1997; Estonia had claimed over 2,000 sq km of Russian territory in the Narva and Pechora regions - based on boundary established under the 1920 Peace Treaty of Tartu; based on the 1920 Treaty of Riga, Latvia had claimed the Abrene/Pytalovo section of the border ceded by the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic to Russia in 1944; has made no territorial claim in Antarctica (but has reserved the right to do so) and does not recognize the claims of any other nation; dispute with Lithuania over the position of the riparian and maritime boundary with Kaliningrad Oblast; Svalbard is the focus of a maritime boundary dispute in the Barents Sea between Norway and Russia
Illicit drugs: limited cultivation of cannabis and opium poppy, mostly for domestic consumption; government has active eradication program; increasingly used as transshipment point for Southwest and Southeast Asian opiates and cannabis and Latin American cocaine to Western Europe and the US ______________________________________________________________________