into the armed forces in
2003; length of compulsory military service is 2 years; plans as of
August 2004 call for reduction in mandatory service to 1 year by
2008; 2003 planning calls for volunteer servicemen to compose 70% of
armed forces by 2010, with the remaining servicemen consisting of
conscripts (August 2004)

Military manpower - availability:
males age 15-49: 39,127,169 (2004 est.)

Military manpower - fit for military service:
males age 15-49: 30,600,088 (2004 est.)

Military manpower - reaching military age annually:
males: 1,262,339 (2004 est.)

Military expenditures - dollar figure:
NA

Military expenditures - percent of GDP:
NA

Transnational Issues Russia

Disputes - international:
China and Russia in 2004 resolved their last border dispute over
islands in the Amur and Argun Rivers, but details on demarcation
have not yet been worked-out; the sovereignty dispute over the
islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai group known
in Japan as the "Northern Territories" and in Russia as the
"Southern Kurils," occupied by the Soviet Union in 1945, now
administered by Russia, and claimed by Japan, remains the primary
sticking point to signing a peace treaty formally ending World War
II hostilities; about a third of the boundary with Georgia remains
undelimited and none of it demarcated with several small, strategic
segments remaining in dispute; OSCE observers monitor volatile areas
such as the Pankisi Gorge in the Akhmeti region and the Kodori Gorge
in Abkhazia; equidistant seabed treaties have been signed with
Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan in the Caspian Sea but no consensus on
dividing the water column among the littoral states; Russia and
Norway dispute their maritime limits in the Barents Sea and Russia's
fishing rights beyond Svalbard's territorial limits within the
Svalbard Treaty zone; Russia continues to reject signing and
ratifying the joint 1996 technical border agreement with Estonia;
the Russian Parliament refuses to consider ratification of the
boundary treaties with Estonia and Latvia, but in May 2003, ratified
land and maritime boundary treaty with Lithuania, which ratified the
1997 treaty in 1999, legalizing limits of former Soviet republic
borders; a simplified transit regime was adopted in July 2003 for
residents of the Kaliningrad coastal exclave to travel through
Lithuania to Russia; delimitation of