Our site lets us post timelines for our spouses and fiances under the heading Russia and Russian Federation.

Most people post under Russia. A few post under the (more correct) title Russian Federation.

But, unless someone knows something very different from me, we are always talking about the same, single nation, with its national capital in Russia. Right?

Is there any benefit to having timelines split up between "Russia" and the "Russian Federation"?

No, there is no difference, and it would be VERY nice if Site Admin would combine the two into one consolidated nation. I originally entered my Timeline using "Russian Federation" because that is the correct name of the country, but since the majority of other timelines use "Russia", I changed mine to Russia too to be more consistent.

Anyway, the way it is now with both "Russia" and "Russian Federation", the timeline data is screwy.

You should post this in:
Site Related Discussion - Updates, Ideas, etc.
http://www.visajourney.com/forums/index.php?showforum=14
That will get the administration to respond faster if at all.

Российская Федерация and Россия seem fairly interchangable to me. (Just like Britain/England, Holland/The Netherlands, USA/America, etc.) In all of these examples there are semantic differences, which are not relevant here.

For the purpose of this forum, it only makes sense to divide countires according to where the US does embassy interviews for given foreign states.

Satellite,
I did that, before I started this thread. The Captain asked a question there, so I decided to post the same issue here, but as a question. Over there, I asked the Captain to consolidate Russia and the Russian Federation.

I think there is a slight difference in Russia and Russian Federation timelines because there are, or at least, there were, a couple countries in the CIS (that's Commonwealth of Independent States.... the former USSR countries) that still had to use Moscow for interviews and consular issues.

That would necessitate a difference in Russia and Russian Federation timelines. I.e., someone from Moscow has a two month wait for an interview, someone from Tashkent has a three month wait for interview.

So, I guess that would be to differentiate between interviews in Russia by actual Russian citizens (Russian Federation) and citizens of other states of the CIS or FSU (countries of the Former Soviet Union).

It may no longer be needed as most countries do interviews in their own U.S. embassies now. There are still exceptions, and for the most part, it seems that for general (non-visa specific) questions from those doing the VJ process in CIS or FSU countries, Russia and/or Russian Federation is still the closest thing they're going to get to correct answers for their queries.

I thought the question of country referred to the country the beneficiary is a citizen of and not where the interview will take place.
"Country of non-US Fiance / Spouse / Family Member Country" pursuant to personal profile edit personal information.
Contrast that with the profile information, benefits filed at in terms of service center.
The other ambiguous question in the profile is "nearest" local CIS office.
In our situation, our CIS office is actually located farther than two of the nearest CIS offices. Since jurisdiction is supposedly done by county, our county is large enough to create this almost 20 mile anomaly where the closest CIS offices are actually north (Sacramento) and west of us (San Francisco), yet we are forced to drive south to Fresno.

Oh well, the Russian Federation seems to be gone from the timelines now Too bad, I like it a lot better than just "Russia".