Russian citizenship law details the conditions by which a person holds citizenship of Russia. The primary law governing citizenship requirements is the federal law "On Citizenship of the Russian Federation" (Russian: О гражданстве Российской Федерации, O grazhdanstve Rossiyskoy Federacii), which came into force on 1 July 2002.

Any person born in Russia to at least one Russian parent, or born overseas to two Russian parents receives Russian citizenship at birth. Foreign nationals may become citizens by admission after meeting a minimum residence requirement (usually five years), proving a legal source of income, and demonstrating proficiency in the Russian language.

Russia was previously a part of the Soviet Union and its residents were Soviet citizens. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all post-Soviet states established separate citizenship laws. Although citizens of the former Union Republics are no longer Soviet, they continue to be eligible for a facilitated acquisition of Russian citizenship in which they can be exempted from some requirements for admission as Russian citizens.

The completely new citizenship law of 28 April 2023 138-FZ entered into force on 26 October 2023, and at that moment the old law 62-FZ, which had been in force for more than 20 years, ceased to be in force.

The distinction between the meaning of the terms citizenship and nationality is not always clear in the English language and differs by country. Generally, nationality refers to a person's legal belonging to a country and is the common term used in international treaties when referring to members of a state; citizenship refers to the set of rights and duties a person has in that country.

The Constitution of Russia provides differing definitions for both terms; citizenship is the status given to an individual indicating the state which exercises jurisdiction over that particular person and nationality refers to a person's ethnic group. Soviet regulations required a person's nationality to be indicated on their internal passport, determined by the nationality of their parents. If their parents' nationalities differed, they could choose either nationality. Russian internal passports since the 1990s have omitted this information completely. In the Russian context, the two terms are not interchangeable and cannot be used as a synonym for the other.

Before the concept of citizenship was codified in legislation, inhabitants of the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire personally owed allegiance to the Russian monarch. There were no general requirements for becoming a Russian subject until the 16th century, when it became customary to treat any person who had been christened by the Russian Orthodox Church as having acquired subjecthood. Foreigners who wished to become Russian subjects were required to swear an oath of personal fealty to the Russian monarch beginning with the reign of Peter the Great. The oath used during this time required the subject to pledge themself as an "obedient slave and eternal subject with my family" of the sovereign and remained unchanged until 1796, when the word "slave" was removed.

Provincial governments held wide discretion in determining who could be naturalized as Russian subjects until 10 February 1864, when the imperial government introduced a five-year residence requirement and shifted authority over naturalization from provincial authorities to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire. The residence requirement could be reduced for individuals who performed an extraordinary service for the Russian state, were especially talented or highly skilled in a scientific field, or made significant investments in the empire. The term "citizenship" became introduced in this reform as a different name for the concept of subjecthood.