Genetic studies on Russians

Genetic studies show that Russians are closest to Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Slovaks, Slovenes, Balts, and other Slavs. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians overall are more similar to Belarusians and to Ukrainians than southern Russians are to northern Russians. Russians in some parts of northwestern Russia share moderate genetic similarities with Baltic Finnic peoples, who lived in modern northwestern-central Russia, and were partly assimilated by East Slavs as they migrated northeastwards.
Y-DNA.
Russians show the y-DNA R1a with frequencies ranging from 33.4% in North Russia to 49% in rest of Russia. R-M17 (and sometimes alternatively defined as R-M198), is particularly common in a large region extending from South Asia and Southern Siberia to Central Europe and Scandinavia.(Underhill 2009) The percentages of Y-chromosome markers vary in ethnic Russian populations by latitude and region.
The top four Y-DNA haplogroups among the sample of 1228 Russians are:
Eight Y chromosome haplogroup subclades, of West Eurasian origin, presented an average frequency greater than 1%, including R1a, N3, I1b, R1b, I1a, J2, N2, and E3b. All together, they account for >95% of the total Russian Y chromosomal pool. Of the 1228 samples, 11/1228 (0.9%) were classified up to the root level of haplogroups F and K. Only 9/1228 samples (0.7%) fell into haplogroups C, Q, and R2 which are specific to East and South Asian populations.
mtDNA.
The mitochondrial gene pool of Russians are represented by mtDNA types belonging to typical West Eurasian groups. East Eurasian admixture was shown to be minimal and existed in low frequencies in the form of Haplogroup M. The same studies indicate West Eurasian haplogroups present at a frequency of 97.8% and 98.5% among a sample of 325 and 201 Russians respectively.
A recent study, while precising that "the genetic distances from the Russians to the European language groups indicate that the gene pool of present-day Russians bears the influence of Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric and, to a lesser extent, Germanic groups, as well as Iranian and Turkic groups", uphold the traditionally held genetic differentiation between Northern and Southern Russians, with the decisive ethnic element being the Finno-Ugric one, more important in the north, the southern population having substantial - generally unacknowledged in historical debates about Russian ethnogenesis - Germanic influence.
Autosomal DNA.
Autosomally, Russians are similar to populations in Eastern Europe.