The contributions of this special issue are centered on Russian natural hazard and risk research in the territory of the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union. The overall aim is to promote the excellent research results in this scientific field which were, unfortunately, for decades only available to the Russian-speaking community. Despite the considerable research efforts undertaken by Russian scholars, methods and results are hardly known among non-Russian researchers and consequently neglected by the international research community simply because many sources are only available in Russian language. A prominent example includes the textbook ''The fundamentals of avalanche science'' by Bozhinskiy and Losev (1998), the Russian version originally published in 1987, which was only translated due to an initiative of the Swiss Federal Institute of Snow and Avalanche Research in Davos, Switzerland. Following a discussion among participants of the Third International Conference on Debris Flows in YuzhnoSakhalinsk in September 2014, we strongly believe that making accessible Russian research to the international hazard community will be of vital interest and will provide substantial added value to the progress in natural hazard and risk research.Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article