Your friendly neighborhood The Next Web-man is currently scoping out the Russian startup ecosystem and technology industry here in Moscow. As you may know, Russia is already home to the two largest Internet companies in Europe, Yandex and Mail.Ru Group, both of which have gone public in recent times.

Russia is also the largest Internet market in Europe, period, after overtaking Germany in terms of total amount of Internet users back in September 2011.

No wonder you’re likely to bump into representatives of many international venture capital and private equity firms in Moscow these days.

But just how big is the Russian Internet market, exactly, and is there still room for growth? How can companies like KupiVIP and Ostrovok strive to become multi-billion dollar companies by focusing exclusively on Russian-speaking countries?

We’ll tell you the great stories behind those and other Russian Internet companies soon, but thanks to independent research from GP Bullhound shared with The Next Web, we can already bring you the most recent facts and figures.

According to the firm, (only) 47 percent of Russia’s total population is currently online, or roughly 67 million people. New users are coming online for the first time in droves all around the country, particularly where penetration is generally low.

Last year, 90 percent of new Internet users were from outside of major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Russia’s mobile penetration is among the highest in the world at 159 percent today, compensating for the poor fixed-line infrastructure in the country. If you think those phones are almost all feature phones, think again: smartphone penetration has reached 25 percent, which is comparable to big Western markets like the UK, France and Germany.

Mobile Internet penetration is currently at about 20 percent but growing rapidly: the monthly mobile audience has nearly doubled in the last 3 years, estimates GP Bullhound, while overall Internet audience has grown by 50 percent.

Today, 8 percent of purchases online are believed to be made from mobile devices.

Meanwhile, Russia’s online advertising market is still nascent, with only 9 percent of ad budgets being spent online vs. roughly 26 percent in the UK.

Nevertheless, spending on Internet marketing is growing quickly as traditional businesses are gradually moving to online and mobile advertising to capture the vast Internet audience in Russia, and investments in e-commerce, online gaming and content businesses are filtering through the supply chain.

Search engine advertising is about 53 percent of the total online advertising share in Russia, with Yandex dwarfing global juggernaut Google (with a 61 percent vs. 26 percent search market share, respectively).

Russia’s e-commerce is booming, too, growing at 16 percent per year as more than two quarters of Internet users still do not shop online (mainly because cash-on-delivery remains the dominant payment method throughout the country, while the logistics system is a nightmare).

The social networking space is still dominated by local players like vKontakte and Odnoklassniki, who both boast very high engagement rates, although Facebook is closing the gap fast.

In 2009, Facebook had only 2 percent of the market, but it has narrowed the gap by growing to a 20 percent share today. Twitter, meanwhile, had about 1 million users in January 2011, according to GP Bullhound.

Earlier this week, a handful of journalists and bloggers, myself included, sat down with Alexander Turkot, who heads up the IT cluster of Skolkovo Foundation. This is the non-commercial organization tasked with the creation of a massive ‘innovation center’ project in Russia. The Skolkovo ‘city-laboratory’ initiative undertaken by the Russian government, in partnership with loads of private companies, aims to breathe new life into a variety of industries, including biomed, energy, space and ICT.

Started in November 2010, the Russian government alone has committed to spending about $1 billion per year to make Skolkovo, which is basically an entire, ‘green’ city/campus being built in a suburb just half an hour outside of Moscow, a roaring success. That annual budget doesn’t even include the contributions from the private sector, which are plentiful (more on that below).

Many are skeptical that this ‘Russian Silicon Valley’ has any chance of becoming successful, however, asserting that it’s impossible to recreate something like Silicon Valley simply by constructing ‘technoparks’, an open university, fancy office buildings and residential areas from the ground up (works that are expected to completed by mid-2014), with the government pumping a massive amount of capital into it.

But being a skeptic is easy. What if it turns out to be super fruitful, spurs innovation domestically and creates global market-oriented tech giants in the process?

Turkot, for one, manages an annual budget of about $50 million that can be pumped into Russian technology startups in the form of grants, which means the Skolkovo Foundation doesn’t actually receive equity in any of the companies it backs. Instead, it provides support in the form of computer equipment, office space, Internet infrastructure, legal and financial services, mentoring and whatnot.

About 180 tech companies have already signed up to become part of Skolkovo, with roughly 40 of them receiving financial backing to date.

Incentives for companies joining Skolkovo include tax benefits, looser custom regulations and other measures to help them cut costs and optimize cashflow.

Grants range from a few tens of thousands of dollars up to $10 million and more, depending on the scope of the applying business. Skolkovo Foundation, however, isn’t looking to back yet another mobile social network or game studio.

Rather, the organization looks for science-heavy projects that require a lot of R&D and engineering chops, and (hopefully) result in profitable businesses based on real products while creating valuable intellectual property.

Turkot acknowledged that the early-stage capital they invest in startups is basically ‘stupid money’ but that they work closely with professional investors, MIT and major global technology companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Nokia, EMC and SAP for the next phases of the businesses in question.

Google is not participating for now, by the way, even if executive chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt is a member of Skolkovo Foundation’s board.

In the future, Skolkovo Foundation may get more involved with the startups it backs, in terms of investing capital in return for equity.

Last year, Skolkovo Foundation even took a bunch of startups on a roadshow to Silicon Valley, which unexpectedly (for a first time trip) turned out to be a massive success and a great learning experience for the companies involved.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of the whole Skolkovo innovation center project, and out of the IT cluster in particular.

Evidently, we’ll be watching the space closely – we also have a number of Russian Internet scene-related stories coming up later this week.

Russian oligarch Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov is one of the richest people in the world, and according to Bloomberg now officially the richest man in his home country. A big part of what propelled the man to this status is his majority stake in Digital Sky Technologies (DST), the investment firm founded by fellow Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, which holds sizeable equity stakes in companies like Facebook, Groupon, Twitter, Zynga, Spotify, Airbnb, ZocDoc and 360buy.com.

According to Bloomberg sources, Usmanov owns roughly 80 percent of DST, which has helped tremendously to increase his net worth to now more than $20 billion.

Thus, the Russian business magnate’s fortune trumps that of steel billionaire Vladimir Lisin, who is only worth about $18.9 billion – the poor guy.

DST has a remarkable track record of buying significant amounts of shares of fast-growing Internet giants before they go public. Portfolio companies like Groupon and Zynga have since hit the public markets and are currently worth roughly $12.3 billion and $10.3 billion, respectively, while Facebook is also gearing up for a blockbuster IPO that could see its valuation increase to $100 billion.

According to Facebook’s recently filed S-1, Digital Sky Technologies owned 8.2 percent of the social networking phenomenon back in February 2010, but the investment firm has since transferred 2 percent of Facebook to Mail.ru Group, the Russian Internet giant of which Usmanov owns 25 percent.

According to the Bloomberg article, DST also has a 5 percent stake in Twitter, another potential IPO candidate.

Fun fact: Usmanov is also the owner of roughly 30 percent of English football team Arsenal FC (and multiple metals, steel, natural gas and media companies).