The Russian Federation forests are a national treasure and pride and one of the most important natural resources. The total forest area is more than 809 mln ha, which is about 20% of the total forest area of the world. Unlike in many other countries, most of them comprise mainly natural forests. Russian forests play a critical role in preserving biodiversity of temperate and boreal regions of Eurasia and in regulating the climate of the entire planet. The forest maintenance, conservation, reforestation, and tree improving programs should be based on solid knowledge on forest population genetic structure and adaptive genetic variation. Forest tree genetic and genomic studies are needed to generate this knowledge. However, such studies have been dramatically underfunded until recently when significant research grants became available via federal funding agencies and programs, such as the Russian Science Foundation and the Russian Federation government „megagrant“ program, although they are still insufficient, and much more federal funding programs are still needed to support basic forestry research.