Russia ( ROO-shee) is a village in Loramie Township, Shelby County, Ohio, United States. The population was 640 at the 2010 census.

Russia was founded by Lewis Phillips, who purchased and plotted the land where the village now sits. Phillips’ house, built in 1853, was the first house in Russia; other settlers followed by the late 1850s. Phillips was after that the first businessman in the village, opening a grocery deposit in 1853. Later settlers soon founded a sober goods buildup and combination sawmills; Russia’s economy was afterward heavily dependent on its sawmills. Among the dated settlers were French-speaking Swiss who had served below Napoléon Bonaparte during the prosecution with Russia.^: 365 According to tradition, the village’s herald commemorates a battle these veterans had fought in Russia.

Russia was received in an area that was already predominantly French. In the ahead of time part of the nineteenth century, a large number of emigrants from Alsace, Lorraine, and additional parts of France decided in southwestern Shelby County and the neighboring portions of northeastern Darke County. Besides Russia, these immigrants founded the communities of Frenchtown and Versailles. By the middle of the 1850s, the heavily Roman Catholic population had grown to the lessening that combined parishes were acknowledged in the area. A log church was built and dedicated to Saint Remigius, the patron saint of France, and Mass was first commended there upon June 15, 1854. The congregation soon outgrew its building and build up a additional brick church; when it became too small, a larger brick church was build up and completed in 1892.^: 367 The village is one of many small communities in a heavily Catholic region of western Ohio known as the “Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches”.

Russia is located at 40°14′5″N 84°24′37″W / 40.23472°N 84.41028°W / 40.23472; -84.41028 (40.234696, −84.410416).