From which language family did the Russian descend?

Russian descends from the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family.

Here's a breakdown:

* Indo-European: This is a vast language family that includes most of the languages of Europe, as well as some languages in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.

* Balto-Slavic: This branch of Indo-European includes the Slavic languages (like Russian, Polish, Czech, etc.) and the Baltic languages (like Lithuanian, Latvian, etc.).

* Slavic: This is the branch that Russian belongs to. Within the Slavic languages, Russian is part of the East Slavic group.

So, the lineage is: Indo-European > Balto-Slavic > Slavic > East Slavic > Russian.