According to Russian Law, about 50% of all products to be sold and/or used in the country require mandatory verification of conformity, i.e. they should be approved by relevant Russian authorities in terms of compliance to national standards. The catalogue of Russian standards can be found at www.gost.ru/wps/portal/pages.en.StandartCatalog. Depending on the nature and application scope of the goods you are planning to ship to Russia, you may need to comply with one or more certification requirements.
Until recently, GOST R Certificate of Conformity, GOST R Declaration of Conformity, Sanitary-Epidemiological Certificate and Rostekhnadzor Permit to Use have been the most common permissive documents in Russia, testifying that products meet necessary safety standards. However, the GOST R system has been gradually replaced by Technical Regulations system. With Technical Regulations progressively coming into force, The GOST R Certificates and Declarations are being replaced by Certificates/Declarations of Conformity to Technical Regulation’s Requirements. Yet some products may still use GOST certificates. As often it is not clear what is required until one actually starts the registration process it is highly recommended that UK exporters task their Russian distributors to deal with product registration issues, or hire one of many companies specializing in the product registration and certification. As of January 2010, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan formed a Customs Union. Products from the Unified Product List of the Customs Union can be tested and certified in just one of the member countries with further circulation within the whole territory of the Customs Union. Only those certification bodies and testing laboratories (centers) that are included in the Unified Register of the Customs Union are allowed to issue the Certificate/Declaration of Conformity in unified format.