Quote Originally Posted by Johanna
I don't know what the policies are on studying English at school in the CIS countries. But either it's not mandatory, or it was only recently made mandatory..
It depends on a particular school. During my shool time after five years of English lessons in ordinary shool (2x45min lessons a week) I was able to say only three phrases: "My name is Yuriy.","This is a table." and "Who is on duty today?"

Within the borders of the European Union, I don't think you could find a 20-year-old who could not at least speak rudimentary English.
Maybe, but there are plenty of 45+ years-old who don't speak English almost at all (At least I met some of such kind).

Then on the other hand, the Russian speaking world is so enormously big, and quite well integrated... There must surely be at least 250mil speakers of Russian... Perhaps English simply isn't needed and this is the reason for the lack of English skills. It's hard to understand what the exact situation is.
For example my wife (she is 29) doesn't speak a word in English. It isn't more understandable for her than Chinese. (That's one of the reasons I post here in English, I hate when she stands behind and reads what I'm typing ). Her native language is Ukrainian, she speaks Russian without any Ukrainian accent and feels perfectly sufficient with these two.