Formats in CIS countries: a localization cheat sheet without guesswork

Most localization defects in the region are not about words but about formats: a date in a foreign order, a currency on the wrong side, a phone without a country code, an alphabet missing from the font. Here is what we check during LQA in every country.

Dates and numbers

In every country of the region the date is written day-month-year with dots: dd.mm.yyyy. The American month-day-year order reads as an error, and yyyy-mm-dd belongs only in technical interfaces. The thousands separator is a space, the decimal separator a comma in Russian-language interfaces; in English versions of products for the region a dot and a comma are acceptable, but they must not be mixed within one screen. Month names in dates inflect in Russian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and other languages — a frequent defect of automatic formatters.

Currencies

• Russia: rouble, ₽ or RUB after the amount with a space — 1 500 ₽.
• Kazakhstan: tenge, ₸ after the amount — 15 000 ₸.
• Uzbekistan: som, UZS or so'm after the amount; amounts are large, spaces between digit groups are mandatory — 1 250 000 UZS.
• Belarus: Belarusian rouble, Br or BYN after the amount, always with kopecks — 49,90 Br.
• Armenia: dram, ֏ or AMD after the amount — 12 000 ֏.
• Kyrgyzstan: som, KGS after the amount — 2 500 KGS.
• Azerbaijan: manat, ₼ or AZN after the amount — 45 ₼.
• Georgia: lari, ₾ or GEL after the amount — 120 ₾.

The regional rule: the currency symbol or code comes after the amount, separated by a space. "$100" with the symbol in front looks foreign in local versions. Check that ₸, ֏, ₼ and ₾ exist in the product font — one of the most frequent LQA findings.

Phone numbers

• Russia and Kazakhstan: +7, then a region or operator code and seven digits; visually +7 777 123 45 67.
• Uzbekistan: +998 and nine digits — +998 90 123 45 67.
• Belarus: +375 and nine digits — +375 29 123 45 67.
• Armenia: +374 and eight digits.
• Kyrgyzstan: +996 and nine digits.
• Azerbaijan: +994 and nine digits.
• Georgia: +995 and nine digits.

The phone field must accept a number with and without the country code, with spaces, brackets and hyphens, and normalise it to one form. Validation of "exactly eleven digits" breaks in the first country with a different number length.

Alphabets and fonts

Cyrillic covers Russian but not the additional letters of Kazakh and Kyrgyz — those are checked separately in every font. Uzbek and Azerbaijani in Latin script use characters absent from the basic set: the apostrophes in oʻ and gʻ, the letter ə. Armenian and Georgian are separate alphabets that need their own fonts and hyphenation rules; Georgian has no capital letters in the usual sense, which changes heading layouts. The first LQA item in these countries is the rendering of every character in every product font, including emails and pushes.

Addresses and other details

• Postal codes: six digits in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Belarus; four in Armenia and Georgia; AZ plus four digits in Azerbaijan.
• Time zones: Russia has eleven, the other countries of the region one each; Kazakhstan moved to a single zone in 2024.
• Names: patronymics are used in Russian-speaking countries and expected in forms; in Georgia and Armenia mostly not.
• The week starts on Monday across the region; a calendar with Sunday first reads as an error.