Russian language in Israel

The Russian language is spoken natively by a considerable proportion of the population of Israel, mostly by immigrants who came from the former Soviet Union from 1989 onwards.^[1][2][3][4] It is a major foreign language in the country, and is used in many aspects of life. Russian is the third most common native language in Israel after Modern Hebrew and Arabic. Government institutions and businesses often also provide information and services in Russian, and has effectively become semi-official in some areas with high concentration of Russian-speaking immigrants.^[5][6] The Russian-speaking population of Israel is the world's third-largest population of Russian native-speakers living outside the former Soviet Union territories after Germany and the United States, and the highest as a proportion of the population.^[7][8] As of 2013, 1,231,003 residents of the Post-Soviet states have immigrated to Israel since the fall of the Soviet Union.^[9] As of 2017, there are up to 1.5 million Russian-speaking Israelis out of total population of 8,700,000 (17.25%).^[10]