Russian is the most widely spoken native language in Europe.
It is an East Slavic language and the largest native language of Europe by number of speakers. Russian is spoken principally in Russia and also by historic communities across several other former Soviet republics and parts of Eastern Europe.
Russian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, though its modern spelling and literary standard developed through centuries of change. Its vocabulary includes inherited Slavic words as well as borrowings from languages such as Church Slavonic, French, German, and English.
Rankings can change depending on whether a source counts native speakers, second-language speakers, or the geographic boundaries used for Europe. German has a large native population within the European Union, but Russian is generally the leading native language when Europe is considered as a whole.