The Russian Constitution provides for freedom of religion and the Government generally respects this right in practice; however, in some cases the authorities imposed restrictions on some groups. Although the Constitution provides for the equality of all religions before the law and the separation of church and state, the Government did not always respect this provision.
There are no reliable statistics that break down the population by denomination. Available information suggests that slightly more than half of the inhabitants consider themselves Russian Orthodox Christians, although the vast majority of those are not regular churchgoers.
There are some 16 to 20 million Muslims, constituting approximately 14 percent of the population and forming the largest religious minority. Muslims live predominantly in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the northern Caucasus, and the Volga region. By most estimates, Protestants constitute the third largest group of believers. An estimated 600,000 to 1 million Jews remain in the country (0.5 percent of the total population) following large-scale emigration over the last 2 decades. Approximately 80 percent of Jews live in Moscow or St. Petersburg. The so-called Jewish Autonomous Oblast, located in the Far East, contains between 5,000 and 7,000 Jews. Buddhism is traditional to three of the country's regions: Buryatiya, Tuva, and Kalmykiya. In some areas, such as Yakutia and Chukotka, pantheistic and nature-based religions are practiced independently or alongside majority religions.