Russian cities with population over 1 million people

The cities with population of over a million people are crucially important places of attraction and concentration of human, labor, industrial, cultural and economic resources as well as centers of social and economic development for their region as well as the country as a whole, and some of them (Moscow and cities near borders) also implement this function for other post-Soviet countries. Besides the number of their permanent residents, the significance of such cities depends on several other factors, the most important of which are the income level of their population, their accumulated economic and cultural potential as well as the specific character of the neighboring regions for which the millionnaire cities serve as centers of cultural, educational, transport and other activities.

Currently there are 15 cities on the territory of the Russian Federation with population of more than 1 million. Russia is ranked third in the world by the number of millionaire cities. Among those, two multimillionaire cities (Moscow and Saint Petersburg) have population of more than 5 million, and one of those (Moscow) has more than 10 million inhabitants. Novosibirsk has population of more than 1.5 million according to the current Rosstat (Russian Federal State Statistics Service) assessment.

Since mid-2000s, growth of population has been observed in some of the millionnaire cities. At the end of 2009, besides Moscow, population growth was observed in Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Ufa, Rostov-on-Don and Chelyabinks; in Nizhny Novgorod, Samara and Omsk, on the contrary, a recession took place.

In the future, the number of millionnaire cities may grow in the course of integration of the cities of Russia by means of the current and planned inclusion of some of the surrounding settlements of a conglomeration into the city while forming urban districts as municipal entities.