Claim: Reuters transmits news in three or more Indo-European languages.

Russian -LRB- ру́сский язы́к , russkiy yazik -RRB- is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia , Belarus , Kazakhstan , Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories . It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine and Latvia , and to a lesser extent , the other countries that were once constituent republics of the Soviet Union and former participants of the Eastern Bloc . Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages . Written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond .   It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages . It is also the largest native language in Europe , with 144 million native speakers in Russia , Ukraine and Belarus . Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers and the seventh by total number of speakers . The language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations . Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English .   Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without , the so-called soft and hard sounds . This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language . Another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels . Stress , which is unpredictable , is not normally indicated orthographically though an optional acute accent -LRB- -LSB- : ru : знак ударения , знак ударения , znak udareniya -RSB- -RRB- may be used to mark stress , such as to distinguish between homographic words , for example замо́к -LRB- zamok , meaning a lock -RRB- and за́мок -LRB- zamok , meaning a castle -RRB- , or to indicate the proper pronunciation of uncommon words or names .