I need an open source geo-coded dataset for cities in Russia (global data would work fine also as long as it includes Russia).
So far the best I've found is the simplemaps dataset which has partial data (677 cities) for free or $199 for their full data (188,968 cities): https://simplemaps.com/data/ru-cities
Does anyone know of a dataset of Russian cities that is both comprehensive and free which includes coordinates (latitude and longitude)?
At the suggestion of sboysel and Stanislav Kralin I explored two data sources that answer the question in different ways.
The RU.zip file off of http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/ is more comprehensive in its inclusion and is better if seeking general populated places in Russia. In total it has 360,646 entries. Be advised that in addition it also contains Federal Districts, Oblasts, Republics, and Krai which may need to remove.
The city.csv file from https://github.com/hflabs/city?files=1 has 1,118 cities and apparently includes only places that have officially been designated as a city by the Russian Federation. This is better when official designation matters.
Just in case somebody lands here, there is big Yandex geocoded places dataset https://yastatic.net/s3/milab/2021/toponyms/data/RussianOikonymsDataset.zip
