Russian, the official language of the Russian Federation, falls into the East Slavic language sub-group of the Slavic languages in Indo-European language family. Russian, one of the official lanuages of the United Nations, is widely spoken in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus besides Russia. After the collapse/fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, although the countries in the former Union have followed the policy of supporting their own local language, Russian still maintains its importance in those countries and plays a major rolet in the relationship among them. Although it is not the official language in other countries, Rusian is still taught in schools in such former Soviet Union countries as Kazakhstan, Belarus, Uzbekstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and Tajikistan. Russian is also spoken either as a foreign language or native language in Baltic countries. The Cyrillic (Russian) alphabet, used for the writing of Slavic languages, consists of 33 letters.