Russia is the world’s largest country, so if differs greatly from region to region. The same can be said about Russian national cuisine, which is rather varied and based on different cultural and historic traditions. Usually any national cuisine is formed under the influence of two main factors: religion, which prescribes eating certain kinds of food, and climate, which determines availability of various vegetables, fruit, meat and fish products. Orthodoxy, which has traditionally been an official religion in Russia, doesn’t forbid any food. But long fasts prescribing abstinence from meat and other types of animal source food, explain why Russian cuisine includes many vegetarian dishes. And long severe Russian winters help to understand why hot fatty soups and broths are so popular in this country.