Russia's top negotiator on entry to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) said he was optimistic a deal could be wrapped up by the end of this year, allowing the energy-rich power to join early next year.
The official, Maxim Medvedkov, was speaking after four days of intensive talks with trade diplomats from some 40 member countries of the WTO, the first major consultations for 18 months in Russia's 13-year long accession talks.
"I hope, with the support of the WTO membership, it will be possible for Russia to complete the negotiations by the end of this year... We think it is quite do-able," he told reporters. "I think our optimism is well-founded."
There was no immediate comment from major trading powers like the European Union, the United States, India and Brazil - all of whom participate in the WTO working party steering the negotiations which kicked off in 1994.
Russia has completed bilateral negotiations on trade in goods and services with all four, as well as with around 45 other key members, and diplomats say the text of a final entry agreement is well advanced.
Mr Medvedkov said most Russian laws had now been adjusted to be in line with WTO rules, including those in the controversial area of patents and copyright, and an outstanding bilateral pact with Saudi Arabia was close to conclusion.
Russia is the largest country still outside the global trade watchdog, which sets the rules for global commerce and provides a forum for the negotiation of multilateral trade pacts. From Friday it has 151 members with the formal entry of Tonga.
President Vladimir Putin has set WTO admission as a key aim of his economic and foreign policies.
Ukraine, another former Soviet economy which has been negotiating for over a decade, is reported close to clinching a final deal after recent talks in Geneva. China, unlike Russia still formally communist, joined in 2001.
Russian officials say they would aim to get all negotiations completed by mid-October at the latest to give the country's parliament, the Duma, time to ratify the pact before being dissolved at the end of the year in the wake of December elections.
A country becomes a WTO member exactly one month after the trade body is formally notified that the entry package, as approved by all current members, has been ratified - meaning that Russia could only get in at best by early next year.
But Alexei Likhachev, deputy chief of the Duma's economic policy committee who sits in with Mr Medvedkov on negotiations, said delay in wrapping up the pact could run into a ratification hold-up if left to the new parliament next year.
Mr Medvedkov said negotiations with former Soviet Georgia, long in political standoff with Moscow, over customs posts on disputed borders were continuing. But the problem was unlikely to hold up a final WTO pact with all members, he added.