Timeline Russia 2007-2012
Return to home
2007 Jan 6,
Belarus stepped up its dispute with Russia over energy sales by
announcing Sat-urday it has started a customs case against
Transneft, Russia's pipeline operator.
(AP, 1/6/07)
2007 Jan 7, Russia stopped
pumping oil into a pipeline network that crossed Belarus. The
line delivered 12.5% of the EU’s oil needs.
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.44)
2007 Jan 8, A senior Russian
official said that Russia has been forced to stop delivering oil to
Europe via Belarus after disruptions to the flow of exports it
blamed on Minsk.
(AP, 1/8/07)
2007 Jan 9, Mikhail Prokhorov
(41), chief executive of Russian mining giant OAO Norilsk Nickel,
was detained in France for questioning as part of a crackdown on a
suspected prostitu-tion ring at an upscale ski resort.
(AP, 1/11/07)
2007 Jan 10, In Russia Liana
Askerova said she was detained as part of the investigation into the
killing of Andrei Kozlov, the Central Bank first deputy chairman who
was shot point-blank on Sept. 13 as he left a soccer game in Moscow.
(AP, 1/12/07)
2007 Jan 10, Belarus lifted a
duty it had imposed on Russian fuel transiting the country.
(SFC, 1/11/07, p.A7)
2007 Jan 11, Oil flowed again
through the main pipeline from Russia to Europe after Moscow and
Belarus agreed to settle a dispute that has hurt Russia's reputation
as an energy supplier.
(AP, 1/11/07)
2007 Jan 12, Russia reportedly
agreed to slash the duty on oil exports to Belarus by 70% and
Belarus will share with Moscow a substantial amount of profits from
the refined oil products it sells to Europe.
(AP, 1/12/07)
2007 Jan 12, Roman Abramovich,
Russian oil magnate, was reported to have ordered a new yacht called
the Eclipse. It was under construction in Germany and was
expected to measure over 525 feet, making it the largest privately
owned yacht in the world.
(WSJ, 1/12/07, p.W1)
2007 Jan 12, China and Russia
blocked the Security Council from demanding an end to politi-cal
repression and human rights violations in military-ruled Myanmar,
rejecting a resolution pro-posed by the United States. South Africa
sided with China and Russia.
(AP, 1/13/07)(Econ, 1/27/07, p.47)
2007 Jan 12, French authorities
freed Mikhail Prokhorov, a Russian billionaire, following four days
of questioning in connection with an investigation into a suspected
prostitution ring at the swank Alpine ski resort of Courchevel.
(AP, 1/12/07)
2007 Jan 15, Russian
authorities began cracking down on millions of illegal migrants
through-out Russia as new rules tightening government control of
migration came into effect, prompting concerns that the country
could face serious shortages of low-wage laborers.
(AP, 1/15/07)
2007 Jan 15, More than 500
armed militants in Chechnya and other parts of Russia's troubled
North Caucasus surrendered to authorities as part of an amnesty that
expired at day’s end.
(AP, 1/15/07)
2007 Jan 16, Russia said it had
delivered new anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran and would
consider further requests by Tehran for defensive weapons.
(Reuters, 1/16/07)
2007 Jan 17, Russian
prosecutors charged Alexei Frenkel, a bank officer, with organizing
the murder of a senior Central Bank official who sought to clean up
Russia's banking industry. Charges were formally entered against
Frenkel in connection with the killing of Andrei Kozlov, who was
shot at point-blank range on Sept. 13 as he left a soccer game in
Moscow.
(AP, 1/17/07)
2007 Jan 17, Russian lawmakers
sharply criticized Estonia for possible plans to remove a 1947
statue that honors Red Army soldiers who helped drive Nazi forces
from the Baltic nation. Last week the Estonian president signed into
law a bill allowing for the removal of the statue. The monument
upset many in the country that suffered five decades of Soviet
occupation.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 18, President Vladimir
Putin ordered Russia's ambassador to Georgia to return to the
Georgian capital after recalling him four months ago, saying that
the two countries must "normalize" badly strained ties.
(AP, 1/18/07)
2007 Jan 20, Konstantin Borovko
(25), a Russian television journalist, was beaten to death in
Vladivostok. Colleagues said they did not think the killing was
related to his work.
(AP, 1/22/07)
2007 Jan 20, The Russian
population was reported to be shrinking by some 750,000 people per
year. New rules put severe restrictions on foreign workers in retail
operations. Russia planned to make available 6 million work permits
for migrants from poor ex-Soviet republics.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.61)
2007 Jan 20, Czech PM Mirek
Topolanek said the US wants to build a radar base in the Czech
Republic as part of its global missile defense system. Poland was
also mentioned as a potential site. Russia in response warned of an
arms race.
(AP, 1/20/07)(WSJ, 1/22/07, p.A1)
2007 Jan 21, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel met with Pres. Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort
of Sochi for talks set to focus on securing guarantees for energy
supplies to the EU. Putin promised to smooth energy flow to Europe.
(AP, 1/21/07)(WSJ, 1/22/07, p.A1)
2007 Jan 21, Russian border
police seized a Japanese fishing boat and its six crew members in
disputed waters between the two countries, prompting the Japanese
government to protest. The No. 38 Zuisho Maru was captured off
Kunashiri Island, one of four disputed islands in a group the
Japanese call the Northern Territories and the Russians call the
Kurils.
(AP, 1/22/07)
2007 Jan 22, Rosoboronexport
chief Sergei Chemezov said Russia had fulfilled a contract to sell
air defense missiles to Iran. This included 29 sophisticated missile
systems under a $700 million contract signed in December 2005.
(AP, 1/23/07)
2007 Jan 24, India and Russia
agreed two arms deals meant to bring bilateral military ties into a
new era, a day before Russian President Vladimir Putin's arrival for
a two-day summit.
(AP, 1/24/07)
2007 Jan 25, Russian President
Vladimir Putin arrived in India, hoping to use the two nations'
decades-long friendship to push for deals in civilian nuclear
cooperation, military hardware and trade expansion. Putin sealed a
deal to construct more nuclear power plants in India.
(AP, 1/25/07)
2007 Jan 27, Andrei Lugovoi,
the man reported by British media to be a suspect in the murder of a
former Russian agent in London hit out at "lies, provocation and
government propaganda," denying any role in the radiation poisoning
death of Alexander Litvinenko.
(AP, 1/27/07)
2007 Jan, Russia's Supreme
Court upheld a lower court's ruling that the Russian-Chechen
Friendship Society must close its doors. Rights advocates denounced
the ruling, charging it was a Kremlin attempt to silence criticism
of its conduct in the violence-wracked Chechnya re-gion. The group
has campaigned against the Russian government's war on separatists
in Chechnya, and published reports alleging torture, abductions and
killings of civilians by Russian forces and their pro-Moscow Chechen
allies.
(AP, 9/14/07)
2007 Feb 1, Russia's Emergency
Ministry planned to fly a chemical laboratory to the Omsk region in
southern Siberia to analyze oily yellow and orange snow which has
covered an area home to 27,000 people. Omsk is a heavily industrial
city with a number of oil and gas refineries.
(Reuters, 2/2/07)
2007 Feb 5, Britain pressed
ahead with a cull of 160,000 turkeys after the nation's first
out-break of a deadly strain of bird flu in farmed poultry as Russia
and Japan banned British poultry imports.
(Reuters, 2/5/07)
2007 Feb 5, A Cold War-era
Soviet submarine that was being towed to Thailand sank off
northwestern Denmark. The Soviet Union built more than 200
Whiskey-class submarines dur-ing the Cold War, many of which are now
being offered for sale by private companies.
(AP, 2/6/07)
2007 Feb 7, Russia's defense
minister laid out an ambitious plan for building new
interconti-nental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and
possibly aircraft carriers.
(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 7, Japan's PM Shinzo
Abe pledged to regain four disputed northern islands from Russia,
saying it was time to end the bickering between Tokyo and Moscow
over the prime fish-ing grounds.
(AP, 2/7/07)
2007 Feb 8, India’s air force
chief S.P. Tyagi told reporters at the Bangalore air show that the
government expects to sign a contract to buy 40 Russian Sukhoi-30
aircraft by the end of the fiscal year March 31.
(AFP, 2/8/07)
2007 Feb 9, The Kremlin said
oil tycoon and Chelsea soccer club owner Abramovich will stay on as
governor of the Chukotka region in northeastern Russia. Abramovich
had submitted his resignation in December.
(www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/business/4542629.html)
2007 Feb 10, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, while visiting Munich for a security confer-ence,
warned that the increased use of military force by the US is
creating a new arms race, with smaller nations turning toward
developing nuclear weapons.
(AP, 2/10/07)(WSJ, 2/12/07, p.A1)
2007 Feb 11, President Vladimir
Putin, making the first visit by a Russian leader to Saudi Arabia,
met King Abdullah and other senior officials for talks that touched
on regional tensions including Iraq and the Palestinian territories.
(AP, 2/11/07)
2007 Feb 12, Russian military
prosecutors pledged to investigate allegations that young
con-scripts were forced into prostitution by fellow soldiers, the
latest claim of rampant abuse in the nation's armed forces.
(AP, 2/12/07)
2007 Feb 12, In Qatar Russia’s
Putin and Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani an-nounced
they would explore the creation of a natural gas cartel to represent
the interests of producer countries. Qatar sits atop the world's
single largest gas field.
(AP, 2/12/07)
2007 Feb 13, Jordan's King
Abdullah II and Russian President Vladimir Putin called for a
stronger international push for lasting Mideast peace and urged for
a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear standoff.
(AP, 2/13/07)
2007 Feb 13, In Geneva the US
clashed with China and Russia during a disarmament debate over how
to prevent an arms race in outer space, and Washington criticized
Beijing for its re-cent test of an anti-satellite missile. Russia
and China, in turn, condemned the "one state" that refuses to
consider a treaty banning space weapons, a reference to the US.
(AP, 2/13/07)
2007 Feb 15, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin dismissed Alu Alkhanov, the president of the republic
of Chechnya, and named its widely feared PM Ramzan Kadyrov as acting
president.
(AP, 2/16/07)(Econ, 2/24/07, p.62)
2007 Feb 15, Russia’s Pres.
Vladimir Putin named Anatoly Serdyukov as defense minister, the
country’s first civilian defense minister in 90 years.
(AP,
11/5/10)(http://newstopics.jpost.com/topic/Anatoliy_Serdyukov)
2007 Feb 16, Russian
prosecutors released more details on new theft and money laundering
charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a jailed former oil tycoon,
and increased by $2 billion the amount of money they say he and his
partner stole from subsidiaries of OAS Yukos.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2007 Feb 18, In St. Petersburg,
Russia, an explosion hit a McDonald's restaurant in the city center,
injuring at least six people.
(AP, 2/18/07)
2007 Feb 19, Gen. Nikolai
Solovtsov, a top Russian general, warned that Poland and the Czech
Republic risk being targeted by Russian missiles if they agree to
host a proposed US missile defense system.
(AP, 2/19/07)
2007 Feb 21, Finance Minster
Alexei Kudrin said that a new domestic offering for shares in
Russia's largest state-controlled bank had brought in $8.8 billion.
(AP, 2/21/07)
2007 Feb 22, Russia’s
government approved a five-year financing plan aimed to decrease
mortality from diseases including diabetes, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS
and cancer. The news came as the state statistics agency said
Russia's population dropped by more than 560,000 last year to 142.2
million, a new post-Soviet low.
(AP, 2/22/07)
2007 Feb 28, Japan and Russia
looked to expand trade despite rocky relations as they agreed to
cooperate on nuclear energy and in preventing disasters in disputed
islands.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Vladimir
Nikolayev, the mayor of Vladivostok, was stripped of his authority
amid a criminal investigation into suspect land deals and
embezzlement in the latest bout of corrup-tion to hit the
long-troubled Pacific port.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Mar 1, President Vladimir
Putin nominated Ramzan Kadyrov, a widely feared security chief, as
the new president of Chechnya. Europe's human rights chief denounced
torture and other rampant abuses in the war-battered region.
Kadyrov, who previously had served as Chechnya's prime minister, has
run a security force that is accused of abducting and abusing
suspected rebels and civilians believed to be connected to them.
(AP, 3/1/07)
2007 Mar 2, Ivan Safronov, a
Russian military affairs writer for the daily Kommersant, fell to
his death from a fifth-story window in Moscow. On Mar 6 his
newspaper said he had received threats while gathering material for
a report claiming Russia planned to provide sophisticated weapons to
Syria and Iran.
(AP, 3/6/07)
2007 Mar 3, Russian police
violently broke up an unauthorized opposition rally in St.
Peters-burg, clubbing dozens of activists before dragging them into
waiting buses.
(AP, 3/3/07)
2007 Mar 6, Interfax news
agency said 2 American women were hospitalized in Moscow for
treatment of thallium poisoning. The women became ill Feb. 24 and
were being treated at Mos-cow's Sklifosovsky clinic.
(AP, 3/6/07)
2007 Mar 7, Russian nuclear
energy officials hosted an Iranian delegation for talks on the
construction of a Russian-built plant that has fallen behind
schedule because of what Moscow said were delays in payments by
Tehran.
(AP, 3/7/07)
2007 Mar 7, In Russia Vladimir
Nikolayev, the mayor of Vladivostok, was ordered arrested amid a
criminal investigation into suspect land deals and embezzlement in
the latest bout of corruption to hit the long-troubled port.
(AP, 3/7/07)
2007 Mar 11, Russians voted in
scattered regional ballots marred by complaints that opposi-tion
forces are being frozen out of the country's politics.
(AP, 3/11/07)
2007 Mar 11, In Georgia’s
Kodori Valley Russian helicopters coordinated a ground and air
attack on 3 settlements and fired a guided missile at a Georgian
government building.
(WSJ, 1/5/07, p.A8)
2007 Mar 12, A new party, Just
Russia, that promotes itself as an opposition group but sup-ports
Vladimir Putin took a prominent place on Russia's political stage
after regional elections that further consolidated the president's
hold on power.
(AP, 3/12/07)
2007 Mar 13, Russian President
Vladimir Putin and Pope Benedict XVI met for the highest-level
Kremlin-Vatican talks in more than three years, focusing on easing
tension between Ro-man Catholics and Orthodox Christians and finding
common ground in denouncing intolerance and extremism.
(AP, 3/13/07)
2007 Mar 14, The Russian
state-run company building a nuclear plant in Iran warned that
Ira-nian payment delays may cause "irreversible" damage to the
project, another strong signal of Moscow's annoyance with Tehran.
(AP, 3/14/07)
2007 Mar 14, Italy and Russia
said they wanted talks between Moscow and the European Un-ion on a
new strategic partnership agreement to start as soon as possible.
(AP, 3/14/07)
2007 Mar 15, Bulgaria, Russia
and Greece signed a deal in Athens to build a 175-mile pipe-line to
transport Russian oil to a port in northern Greece.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 15, In St. Petersburg
Nikolai Zavadsky, the husband of a late curator at Russia's most
famous museum, was convicted in the theft of dozens of art objects
and sentenced to five years in prison. He was also ordered to pay
$283,000 in damages to the Hermitage.
(AP, 3/15/07)
2007 Mar 16, Government
officials said that Russia will build two nuclear reactors annually
through 2015, and increase to four a year by 2020 in an effort to
sharply increase atomic power generation, according to Russian news
agencies.
(AP, 3/16/07)
2007 Mar 17, A Russian Tu-134
airliner crash landed in heavy fog in the central Russian city of
Samara, killing 6 people and injuring 26.
(AP, 3/17/07)
2007 Mar 19, A methane gas
explosion ripped through a Siberian coal mine, killing 110 min-ers
in the country's worst mining disaster in more than a decade.
(WSJ, 3/21/07, p.A1)(AP, 3/19/08)
2007 Mar 20, Russia confirmed
that it has begun pulling out experts from the Iranian nuclear power
plant they were helping build and that it is withholding nuclear
fuel for Iran’s reactors.
(SFC, 3/21/07, p.A3)
2007 Mar 20, Fire swept through
a nursing home in southern Russia after the night watchman ignored
two alarms, killing 62 people in the Azov Sea coast village of
Kamyshevatskaya, where the closest fire station was nearly an hour's
drive away.
(AP, 3/20/07)
2007 Mar 24, Russian
authorities broke up a demonstration against the government in
Nizhny Novgorod, detaining hundreds of activists.
(AP, 3/24/07)
2007 Mar 25, Fire broke out in
a Moscow striptease club in the early hours, killing 10 people.
(AP, 3/25/07)
2007 Mar 26, Chinese President
Hu Jintao arrived in Russia on his third visit as national leader,
seeking energy deals but also offering Moscow business opportunities
and international cooperation as they expand ties.
(Reuters, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 27, In Kiev, Ukraine,
a Russian businessman allied with Ukraine's president was killed by
a sniper as he was escorted from a courthouse during a break in his
extortion trial.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 28, Russia's
scientific elite, in a rare show of disobedience to the Kremlin,
voted against a government-proposed charter that would have
transferred control of the historically independent Academy of
Sciences to the state.
(AP, 3/28/07)
2007 Apr 2, Russia's foreign
spy service released previously classified files on a double agent
who, under the codename "Britt", passed secrets to Moscow from
inside British intelligence in the 1940s.
(AP, 4/2/07)
2007 Apr 5, Ramzan Kadyrov was
inaugurated as the new president of Chechnya on a bless-ing from the
Kremlin, which has relied on him to stabilize the region after more
than a decade of separatist fighting.
(AP, 4/5/07)
2007 Apr 7, A Russian rocket
carrying the American billionaire who helped develop Microsoft Word
roared into the night skies over Kazakhstan, sending Charles Simonyi
and two cosmo-nauts soaring into orbit on a two-day journey to the
international space station.
(AP, 4/7/07)
2007 Apr 9, Two Russian
cosmonauts and US billionaire Charles Simony bringing a gourmet meal
arrived at the international space station, to a warm welcome from
current crewmen.
(AP, 4/10/07)
2007 Apr 9, Iran announced that
it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, dra-matically
expanding a program that the UN has demanded it halt. An Iranian
Revolutionary Guard general visited Russia despite a UN travel ban
over Tehran nuclear defiance. Russia de-nied any violation.
(AP, 4/9/07)(WSJ, 4/10/07, p.A1)
2007 Apr 11, Royal Dutch Shell
PLC and its partners ceded a controlling stake in the Sakha-lin-2
gas project to Russia’s state owned OAO Gazprom. The deal also
entitled Gazprom a percentage of profits from oil and gas and
increased managerial control.
(WSJ, 4/26/07, p.A3)(http://tinyurl.com/39c2yh)
2007 Apr 12, Russian
authorities said they have halted the work of all foreign adoption
agen-cies for several months, virtually shutting down the placement
of children from one of the most important countries for US families
seeking to adopt.
(AP, 4/12/07)
2007 Apr 13, Boris Berezovsky,
the exiled Russian tycoon who has emerged as one of the Kremlin's
most vocal opponents, called for the use of force to oust President
Vladimir Putin and claimed he has support from some in the country's
political elite. In response, Russia's chief prosecutor opened a
criminal case against Berezovsky on charges of plotting a coup.
Britain, granted Berezovsky refugee status in 2003.
(AP, 4/13/07)
2007 Apr 14, Russian police
detained Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and leader of
one of Russia's strongest opposition movements, and at least 100
other activists as they gathered for a forbidden anti-Kremlin
demonstration in central Moscow.
(AP, 4/14/07)
2007 Apr 15, Russia launched
its first new generation nuclear submarine since the fall of the
Soviet Union, as the Kremlin seeks to upgrade its undersea nuclear
strike force. Russia began construction of its first floating
nuclear power plant, and planned to build at least six more de-spite
long-standing environmental concerns that they are vulnerable to
accidents at sea. In St. Petersburg, Russia, club-swinging riot
police clashed with opposition supporters as an anti-Kremlin protest
dispersed. Police chased small groups of demonstrators, beating some
on the ground and hauling them into police buses.
(AP, 4/15/07)(Reuters, 4/15/07)
2007 Apr 15, In Russia a
keel-laying ceremony was held in Severodvinsk, on the White Sea, for
the new 460-foot Mikhail Lomonosov, a $360 million demonstration
ship capable of provid-ing 76-megawatts of nuclear power to an
onshore location. Completion was expected in 2010 with construction
of new ships to start annually.
(WSJ, 8/21/07, p.A13)
2007 Apr 18, Russian police
raided Educated Media Foundation, an independent Russian
or-ganization. Police said the search was linked to a criminal case
launched against the director after she failed to declare some
$12,500 in cash she brought into the country on January 21.
Foundation President Manana Aslamazyan said this was likely linked
to growing government pressure on Western-funded NGOs. Aslamazyan
fled to Paris and authorities shuttered the foundation.
(AP, 4/20/07)(AP, 4/24/07)(SFC, 6/30/07, p.A7)
2007 Apr 21, Charles Simonyi,
an American billionaire who paid $25 million for a 13-day trip to
outer space, returned to Earth in a space capsule that also carried
a cosmonaut and an American astronaut, making a soft landing on the
Kazakh steppe.
(AP, 4/21/07)
2007 Apr 23, Boris Yeltsin
(b.1931), former Russian leader (1991-1999), died. He engineered the
final collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) and pushed Russia to
embrace democracy and a market economy. His 1994 memoir was titled
"The Struggle for Russia."
(AP, 4/23/07)
2007 Apr 23, The WWF said
hunters in Russia's Far East have shot and killed one of the last
seven surviving female Amur leopards living in the wild.
(Reuters, 4/23/07)
2007 Apr 24, At a conference in
Moscow titled “Megaprojects of Russia’s East,” supporters proposed a
68-mile tunnel under the Bering Strait. The tunnel linking Alaska
and Siberia would cost $65 billion and take some 20 years to build.
(SFC, 4/25/07, p.A6)
2007 Apr 26, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, in his last annual address to lawmakers, at-tacked
US foreign policy and embraced traditional values in a hawkish
speech that laid out a route for his successor to follow when he
steps down next year.
(AP, 4/26/07)
2007 Apr 26, In Estonia
protesters gathered at a Soviet war grave in downtown Tallinn, as
authorities prepared to remove the bodies despite Russia's angry
objections. Estonia's govern-ment intends to relocate the Soviet
grave, believed to contain the remains of 14 soldiers, and the
Bronze Soldier statue next to it.
(AP, 4/26/07)
2007 Apr 27, A Russian military
helicopter crashed in Chechnya, killing all 18 people aboard,
emergency officials said. There were conflicting reports about
whether the craft was shot down.
(AP, 4/27/07)
2007 Apr 27, Mstislav
Rostropovich (b.1927), master cellist, died. He had fought for the
rights of Soviet-era dissidents and later triumphantly played Bach
suites below the crumbling Berlin Wall.
(AP, 4/27/07)(Econ, 5/12/07, p.92)
2007 Apr 27, Estonia removed a
Soviet war memorial from downtown Tallinn under cover of darkness,
carrying out a plan that has rankled Russia and provoked protests
that left one per-son dead and dozens injured.
(AP, 4/27/07)
2007 Apr 28, In Estonia
minority Russian youths angry over the government's decision to
re-move a Soviet war memorial from Tallinn rioted for a second
night, with unrest spreading to at least two other towns. 66 people
were injured in the capital, including six policemen. More than 500
people, many of them adolescents, were detained overnight as vandals
prowled the streets, breaking shop windows and looting stores.
(AP, 4/28/07)
2007 Apr, Stanislovas Jucys, a
Lithuanian businessman, disappeared. He was the CEO of a
Kaliningrad-based construction company with a majority stake in
Lithuanian hands. Jucys' re-placement was killed a few months later,
and the company was taken over by a Russian firm.
(Reuters, 3/20/08)
2007 May 2, Russian oil firms
rushed to re-route a quarter of their refined products exports away
from ports in Estonia after Russia's railways halted the route amid
a political dispute with Tallinn. Young Russians staged raucous
protests in Moscow to denounce neighboring Estonia for removing a
Soviet war memorial from its capital, and the Estonian ambassador
said pro-Kremlin activists tried to attack her as she arrived at a
news conference.
(Reuters, 5/2/07)
2007 May 3, Russia lashed out
at the EU and NATO for supporting Estonia in its row with Moscow
over the relocation of a Soviet war monument.
(AP, 5/3/07)
2007 May 7, Russia’s state
security service said fugitive Rustam Dzhumaliyev had evaded arrest
and become a minor celebrity by masquerading as a US citizen
hitch-hiking across the country for a record attempt.
(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 8, Amnesty Int’l. said
in a report that China and Russia are supplying arms to Su-dan that
are being used to fuel the violence in the Darfur region in
violation of a UN arms em-bargo. China and Russia quickly rejected
the report and Sudan's government said it was "not justified." China
confirmed it would send military engineers for a planned UN
peacekeeping force to Sudan's Darfur region.
(AP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 9, In the early hours
Internet traffic in Estonia spiked to thousands of times the normal
flow. May 10 was heavier still, forcing Estonia’s biggest bank to
shut down its online service for more than an hour. Hansabank
continued under assault and worked to block access to 300 suspect
Internet addresses. On March 12, 2009, Konstantin Goloskokov, an
activist with Russia's Nashi youth group and aide to a pro-Kremlin
member of parliament, said he had or-ganized a network of
sympathizers who bombarded Estonian Internet sites with electronic
re-quests, causing them to crash.
(www.lunchoverip.com/2007/05/estonia_under_c.html)(Reuters, 3/12/09)
2007 May 10, Talks in Brussels
between NATO's top generals and their Russian counterpart failed to
narrow the gap between Moscow and the West over missile defense and
arms control in Europe.
(AP, 5/10/07)
2007 May 11, Austrian
authorities said they have arrested 40 suspects and seized thousands
of videos, CDs and DVDs as part of a yearlong crackdown on child
pornography. Police in Italy made two arrests in connection with the
investigation, which was code-named Operation Max. The server was
located in St. Petersburg, Russia, and since has been shut down.
(AP, 5/11/07)
2007 May 12, The leaders of
Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan reached a landmark pipeline
deal that will strengthen Moscow's control over Central Asia's
energy export routes. The deal will dramatically increase the amount
of natural gas Russia moves from Central Asia to Europe.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 12, Russia said that
it could not accept elements of a draft UN resolution on Kos-ovo
worked out by the US and EU nations, maintaining its strong
opposition to a Western-backed plan for the Serbian province's
independence.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 12, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship carrying 2.5 tons of supplies, equipment and
gifts blasted off en route to the international space station.
(AP, 5/12/07)
2007 May 14, In Russia 10
people were found dead after a fire swept through a cafe in Orsk
near the border with Kazakhstan. Prosecutors indicated they suspect
arson.
(AP, 5/14/07)
2007 May 15, Russia's top AIDS
specialist said Russia's AIDS epidemic is worsening with as many as
1.3 million people infected with HIV as the virus spreads further
into the heterosexual population.
(AP, 5/15/07)
2007 May 17, Russian Orthodox
leaders signed a pact to heal an 80-year schism between the church
in Russia and an offshoot, the Church Abroad, set up following the
Bolshevik Revolu-tion. At least 10 of 145 Church Abroad parishes in
the US opposed the canonical union. Most of the New York-based
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) agreed to unite with
the Patriarchate of Moscow.
(AP, 5/17/07)(WSJ, 1/18/07, p.A12)(Econ,
10/18/08, p.69)
2007 May 17, Estonia's defense
minister said that the massive cyber attacks that have crip-pled the
high-tech country's Web sites are a threat to national security, and
that it's possible the Russian government was behind them.
(AP, 5/17/07)
2007 May 17, US lawmakers
branded China and Russia the world's two biggest copyright thieves.
(Reuters, 5/17/07)
2007 May 18, In Russia EU
leaders criticized Russia's human rights record, and were faulted in
return, at the end of a summit that produced no formal agreements
but helped illustrate the widening political chasm between Moscow
and the West.
(AP, 5/18/07)
2007 May 17, Russia filed a
suit against the Bank of New York for $22.5 billion for its role in
a money laundering scheme that was broken up by US authorities in
1999.
(WSJ, 5/18/07, p.A3)
2007 May 18, In Russia EU
leaders criticized Russia's human rights record, and were faulted in
return, at the end of a summit that produced no formal agreements
but helped illustrate the widening political chasm between Moscow
and the West. Russia barred activists, including chess grandmaster
Kasparov, from protests near the Volga summit.
(AP, 5/18/07)(WSJ, 5/19/07, p.A1)
2007 May 19, German Gref,
Russia’s Economy Minister, told reporters that Russia will not allow
indebted state companies to default. It was reported that more than
a half-dozen journal-ists with the Russian News Service, have
resigned to protest the new pro-Kremlin manage-ment's policy that at
least 50 percent of coverage must be positive.
(Reuters, 5/19/07)(AP, 5/19/07)
2007 May 20, Hundreds of
demonstrators gathered outside the Moscow’s main broadcast fa-cility
to protest what they called lies and censorship on TV stations that
are either controlled by the state or under its influence.
(AP, 5/20/07)
2007 May 22, Prosecutors in
London accused Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB agent, of mur-der
in the radioactive poisoning of fellow ex-operative Alexander
Litvinenko and sought his ex-tradition from Russia. The Russian
prosecutor-general's office said it will not turn over Lugovoi to
British authorities.
(AP, 5/22/07)
2007 May 24, A methane
explosion tore through a coal mine in southern Siberia, killing 38
miners and injuring seven others. One worker died days later raising
the toll to 39.
(AP, 5/24/07)(AP, 5/27/07)
2007 May 25, Russia's lower
house of parliament gave preliminary backing to a new wide-ranging
restrictions on smoking in public. In southern Russia a brawl
between hundreds of Caucasus migrants and local Russians, all armed
with metal rods, baseball bats and knives, killed an ethnic Chechen
in Stravropol.
(AP, 5/26/07)(AP, 5/25/07)
2007 May 27, Russian police
detained gay protesters calling for the right to hold a Gay Pride
parade in central Moscow while nationalists shouting "death to
homosexuals" punched and kicked the demonstrators.
(AP, 5/27/07)
2007 May 29, Russia pledged to
write off an additional $500 million of African debt. Russia
test-launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile that is
capable of carrying multiple inde-pendent warheads. President
Vladimir Putin warned that US plans for an anti-missile shield in
Europe would turn the region into a "powder keg."
(Reuters, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/29/07)(AP, 5/30/07)
2007 May 31, President Vladimir
Putin said that tests of new Russian missiles were a re-sponse to
the planned deployment of US missile defense installations and other
forces in Europe, suggesting Washington has triggered a new arms
race.
(AP, 5/31/07)
2007 May 31, The chief suspect
in the murder of Russian ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko ac-cused the
British secret service of being behind the killing and said
Litvinenko himself had been spying for MI6.
(AFP, 5/31/07)
2007 May 31, The US and Russia
agreed to put nuclear radiation monitors at all of Russia’s int’l.
border crossings by 2011.
(WSJ, 6/1/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun 1, The Norwegian
environmental group Bellona warned that a nuclear waste dump in the
Russia Arctic may be in danger of exploding because of corrosion
caused by salt water in enormous storage tanks.
(AP, 6/1/07)
2007 Jun 2, In Russia former PM
Mikhail Kasayanov was nominated by his opposition move-ment to run
in next year's presidential election and promised to stop the
Kremlin orchestrating the vote in its favor.
(AP, 6/2/07)
2007 Jun 3, President Vladimir
Putin warned that Moscow could take "retaliatory steps" if
Washington proceeds with plans to build a missile defense system for
Europe, including possi-bly aiming nuclear weapons at targets on the
continent.
(WSJ, 6/4/07, p.A1)
2007 Jun 3, A severe landslide
has nearly obliterated one of Russia's most noted natural wonders,
the Valley of Geysers. A snow-covered mound collapsed "within
seconds" and caused a massive landslide, about a mile long and 600
feet wide, burying two-thirds of the valley.
(AP, 6/5/07)
2007 Jun 3, Nigerian gunmen
kidnapped six foreign staff of United Company RUSAL after blowing up
their apartment with explosives in the southeastern town of Ikot
Abasi.
(Reuters, 6/3/07)
2007 Jun 5, US President George
W. Bush sought to soothe Moscow's fury at Washington's plans to
extend its anti-missile shield in Europe, saying in Prague on the
eve of the G8 summit that Russia was "not our enemy."
(AFP, 6/5/07)
2007 Jun 6, PM Andrus Ansip
said Estonia is seeking help from Russia to find the culprits
be-hind a massive wave of attacks on the country's Internet
infrastructure.
(AP, 6/6/07)
2007 Jun 7, In Germany
Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the G8 has agreed on a plan
call-ing for "substantial cuts" to greenhouse gas emissions. Riot
police used water cannons to turn protesters away from the fence
surrounding the Group of Eight summit. G8 leaders reached an
agreement on climate change, adopting a statement that says they
should "seriously consider" proposals to cut the emissions of
greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050. Russian President Vladimir
Putin, bitterly opposed to a US missile shield in Europe, told
President Bush that Mos-cow would drop its objections if the
radar-based system were installed in Azerbaijan.
(AP, 6/7/07)(AP, 6/7/08)
2007 Jun 7, An international
conservation group said Russia has established the Zov Tigra
National Park to protect Siberian tigers. According to the WWF the
200,000-acre park will pro-tect the big cat's habitat while
simultaneously allowing for nature tourism.
(AP, 6/8/07)
2007 Jun 9, Russia's most vocal
opposition movement, headed by former chess champion Garry Kasparov,
demonstrated in St. Petersburg without police violence or
interference for the first time in months of protests.
(AP, 6/10/07)
2007 Jun 9, Boeing and Aeroflot
signed a deal for the Russian carrier to acquire 22 Dream-liner jets
from the American plane maker.
(AP, 6/9/07)
2007 Jun 10, Russian President
Vladimir Putin called for creating an alternative to the World Trade
Organization that would favor developing economies and suggested
giving a greater role to regional currencies.
(AP, 6/10/07)
2007 Jun 12, Pres. Putin led
ceremonies to honor Russia Day. The holiday is one of several that
have been shifted or renamed as Putin's Kremlin seeks to shape
Russia's image. It was in-troduced by his predecessor, Boris
Yeltsin, to commemorate Russia's 1990 declaration of sov-ereignty
and was long known to many as Independence Day.
(AP, 6/12/07)
2007 Jun 15, Russia's security
agency announced an espionage investigation based on statements by
the suspect in Andrei Litvinenko's radiation poisoning, a move
apparently target-ing a Kremlin foe in Britain.
(AP, 6/15/07)
2007 Jun 16, North Korea sent a
letter to the UN nuclear watchdog, inviting inspectors to the
country to discuss procedures for shutting down its main nuclear
reactor. Top US nuclear nego-tiator Christopher Hill said technical
problems in Russia are holding up the transfer of North Ko-rean
funds linked to a nuclear disarmament deal.
(AP, 6/16/07)
2007 Jun 17, Iran said it had
received indications from Russia's president that he would not
follow through with an offer to allow the US to use a radar station
in neighboring Azerbaijan for missile defense against Tehran.
(AP, 6/17/07)
2007 Jun 19, A new survey
reported that Moscow is the world's most expensive city for the
second year in a row, thanks to an appreciating ruble and rising
housing costs.
(AP, 6/19/07)
2007 Jun 19, A Russian court
sentenced four men to prison terms of between seven and 14 years for
the racially motivated killing of a Congolese student. The slaying
of Roland Epassak in St. Petersburg two years ago prompted outrage
and protests among Russian and foreign ex-change students and other
young people.
(AP, 6/19/07)
2007 Jun 21, In Russia a fire
swept through a nursing home in Western Siberia's Omsk re-gion and
killed at least 10 people.
(AP, 6/21/07)
2007 Jun 21, The European Court
of Human Rights found the Russian authorities responsible for the
killings of four members of a Chechen family in 2003 and ordered
Moscow to pay a rela-tive $114,000.
(AP, 6/21/07)
2007 Jun 22, British energy
group BP, facing pressure from the Kremlin, said that it had agreed
to sell its stakes in a Siberian gas field and company to Russian
gas giant Gazprom for up to 900 million dollars (669 million euros).
(AP, 6/22/07)(WSJ, 6/22/07, p.A3)
2007 Jun 23, Italian energy
company Eni SpA and Russia's state-controlled OAO Gazprom said they
signed a memorandum of understanding on the possibility of supplying
Russian gas to European Union countries through a pipeline under the
Black Sea.
(AP, 6/23/07)
2007 Jun 26, A CD of the
Russian National Orchestra performing Dead Symphony No. 6: An
Orchestral Tribute to the Grateful Dead, was released in the US. The
work was directed by composer Lee Johnson.
(SFC, 6/27/07, p.E3)
2007 Jun 27, Moscow legislators
approved a fifth term for Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, whom critics accuse of
running the city like a personal fiefdom.
(AP, 6/27/07)
2007 Jun 28, President Vladimir
Putin welcomed Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez for talks at the
Russian presidential retreat outside Moscow, saying economic affairs
and military-technical cooperation were on the agenda.
(AP, 6/29/07)
2007 Jun 28, Hundreds of ethnic
Georgians confronted Russian peacekeeping forces in the breakaway
region of South Ossetia, throwing paint and gasoline on the troops
and forcing them to stop blocking a road project.
(AP, 6/28/07)
2007 Jun 28, The European
Commission said all Indonesian airlines and several from Russia,
Ukraine and Angola will be banned from flying to the EU due to
safety concerns.
(AP, 6/28/07)
2007 Jun, Wenda, a
question-and-answer “knowledge community” product,
developed by Google in China, was launched in Russia.
(Econ, 10/13/07, SR p.7)
2007 Jul 1, Russia’s Pres.
Putin arrived in Maine for talks with Pres. Bush.
(AP, 7/2/07)
2007 Jul 2, Russia’s Pres.
Putin, while visiting Pres. Bush in Maine, proposed an alternative
missile shield system to be jointly developed by the NATO-Russia
Council.
(SFC, 7/3/07, p.A3)
2007 Jul 4, Russia’s parliament
authorized an exemption to Gazprom and OAO Transneft from limits on
wielding arms. They would now be able to employ their own armed
operatives.
(WSJ, 1/5/07, p.A4)
2007 Jul 4, The Black Sea
resort of Sochi was elected the host city of the 2014 Winter
Olym-pics, taking the Winter Games to Russia for the first time.
(AP, 7/4/08)
2007 Jul 5, Larisa Arap, a
member of a Russian opposition group, was hospitalized in a
psy-chiatric facility for criticizing a clinic's use of violence
against mentally ill patients.
(Reuters, 7/30/07)
2007 Jul 6, Russian lawmakers
passed a bill that cracks down on dissent and expands police
surveillance authority ahead of 2008 elections.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 8, Russia’s top
security agency said it has declassified documents on millions of
vic-tims of Soviet-era repression (1920-1950), allowing relatives to
request information about those who were executed or died of disease
and starvation in prison.
(AP, 7/8/07)
2007 Jul 10, Russian newspapers
reported that thieves had stolen a collection of rare paint-ings
worth millions of dollars from retired judge Kamo Manukyan. They
were stored unguarded in his empty apartment. The 13 paintings
stolen included works by Frenchman Georges-Pierre Seurat, the
founder of neo-impressionism, Russian seascape painter Ivan
Aivazovsky, and Russian expressionist Alexej Jawlenski.
(Reuters, 7/10/07)
2007 Jul 14, Russia suspended
its participation in a key European arms control treaty that governs
deployment of troops on the continent. Under the moratorium, Russia
will halt inspec-tions and verifications of its military sites by
NATO countries and will no longer limit the number of its
conventional weapons. The treaty, between Russian and NATO members,
was signed in 1990 and amended in 1999 to reflect changes since the
breakup of the Soviet Union, adding the requirement that Moscow
withdraw troops from the former Soviet republics of Moldova and
Georgia. Russia has ratified the amended version, but the United
States and other NATO members have refused to do so until Russia
completely withdraws.
(AP, 7/14/07)
2007 Jul 15, Marina Pisareva
(47), the deputy head of a small Russian division of German media
company Bertelsmann AG, was found dead at her summer house near
Moscow, possibly stabbed with her own dagger.
(AP, 7/16/07)
2007 Jul 16, Britain ordered
the expulsion of four Russian diplomats because of Moscow's refusal
to extradite the lead suspect in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB
officer in London.
(AP, 7/17/07)
2007 Jul 17, Russia vowed a
"targeted and appropriate" response to Britain's expulsion of four
diplomats in a mounting confrontation over the probe into the
radiation poisoning death of a former KGB officer.
(AP, 7/17/07)
2007 Jul 18, An explosion tore
through a crowd of mourners at a cemetery in southern Rus-sia,
wounding at least 10 people, including four police officers. The
funeral was for an ethnic Russian woman who had been fatally shot
along with her two grown children July 16 in In-gushetia.
(AP, 7/19/07)
2007 Jul 19, Russia announced
the tit-for-tat expulsion of four British diplomats, a visa ban on
British officials and the suspension of bilateral counter-terrorism
cooperation amid a mounting diplomatic row. US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice called on Russia to honor Britain's re-quest to
extradite the chief suspect over the murder of former agent
Alexander Litvinenko.
(AFP, 7/19/07)
2007 Jul 21, Attackers dressed
in dark clothes and wielding metal pipes raided a camp of
en-vironmental protesters near Angarsk, Siberia, leaving one dead
and several injured. Over 20 demonstrators belonging to Autonomous
Action had been camped out by a reservoir, about 2,600 miles east of
Moscow, to protest nuclear waste processing at the state-owned
Angarsk Electrolysis Chemical Plant. Ilya Borodayenko (26) died from
a cracked skull. One of the at-tackers was later identified as Pavel
Rikhvanov, the son of Marina Rikhvanov, founder of the Baikal
Ecological Wave environmental group.
(AP, 7/21/07)(WSJ, 10/29/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 26, The European Court
of Human Rights ordered the Russian government to pay damages of
$196,000 to the family members of 11 Chechen civilians killed by
Russian soldiers in 2000, when security forces rampaged through
Novye Aldi, setting fire to houses and killing at least 50
civilians.
(AP, 7/27/07)
2007 Jul 27, Russia said it
planned to send a small submarine to the ocean floor under the North
Pole to stake a claim to the region.
(WSJ, 1/28/07, p.A1)
2007 Jul 29, A 43-year-old
Russian cargo plane crashed minutes after taking off from a Mos-cow
airport, killing all seven crew on board.
(AP, 7/29/07)
2007 Aug 1, Russian explorers
readied for a historic descent to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean
under the North Pole as part of an expedition to claim the area for
Russia.
(AP, 8/1/07)
2007 Aug 1, Russia's
state-controlled gas monopoly said that it will reduce natural gas
sup-plies to Belarus by 45 percent as of Aug 3 after Minsk failed to
pay in full for previous gas ship-ments.
(AP, 8/1/07)
2007 Aug 2, Two deep-diving
Russian mini-submarines descended more than 2 1/2 miles un-der North
Pole ice to stake a flag on the ocean floor, part of a quest to
bolster Russian claims to much of the Arctic's oil-and-mineral
wealth.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2007 Aug 2, A 6.4-magnitude
quake struck on the southern tip of Sakhalin island, just north of
Japan. At least 2 people were killed and some 2,000 in Nevelsk moved
to tent camps after the powerful earthquake left apartment buildings
in ruins.
(AP, 8/3/07)
2007 Aug 2, An unmanned Russian
cargo ship carrying over 2.5 tons of supplies, equipment and gifts
blasted off for the international space station.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2007 Aug 2, Canada dismissed
Russia's claim to a large chunk of the resource-rich Arctic, saying
the tactic was more suited to the 15th century than the real world.
(AP, 8/2/07)
2007 Aug 3, About 50 women
occupied a central square in Makhachkala, Dagestan, declaring a
hunger strike and vowing not to leave until authorities tell them
what happened to their miss-ing children. The president of Dagestan,
Mukhu Aliev, admitted last month that 76 people have been kidnapped
so far this year in Dagestan. In six of those cases, the abductors
wore camou-flage uniforms similar to those worn by law enforcement
officers.
(AP, 8/4/07)
2007 Aug 6, A Moscow court
convicted Alexei Pichugin, former top security officer with the
dismantled Yukos oil company in the deaths of 3 people, sentencing
him to life in prison in a re-trial. Russia deployed new air defense
systems capable of shooting down ballistic missiles, and the air
force chief said the weapon could be used to protect 2014 Winter
Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.
(AP, 8/6/07)(AP, 8/6/07)
2007 Aug 7, A European diplomat
said that Russian officials told the Iranians about two weeks ago
that Russian fuel roads to the Bushehr reactor would be held back as
long as unre-solved questions about Tehran's past nuclear activities
remained.
(AP, 8/7/07)
2007 Aug 7, Georgia accused
Russia of "undisguised aggression," saying two Russian fighter jets
intruded on its airspace and fired a missile that landed near a
house. Russia denied the al-legation.
(AP, 8/7/07)
2007 Aug 7, In Nigeria 6
Russian hostages, kidnapped on June 3, were freed in the oil
pro-ducing Niger Delta after two months in captivity. Rusal, the
world's largest aluminium producer, acquired 77 percent of the
Nigerian company Alscon in February.
(AFP, 8/7/07)
2007 Aug 12, A video was posted
on Russian ultranationalist sites of the Internet showing the brutal
execution of two men from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The man who
posted the video turned himself on Aug 14 in Maikop, capital of the
southern Russian republic of Adygei.
(AP, 8/15/07)
2007 Aug 13, A bomb explosion
threw the Neva Express train, which was en route from Mos-cow to St.
Petersburg, off the tracks and injuring 60 people. Suspicion fell on
representatives of extremist nationalist organizations.
(AP, 8/14/07)(AP, 8/15/07)
2007 Aug 14, Tikhon Khrennikov
(94), Stalin’s music master, died. His 1939 opera “Into the Storm,”
based on a novel by Nikolai Virta, was the first in which Lenin
appeared as a character on the stage.
(Econ, 9/1/07, p.77)
2007 Aug 15, Sergei Sinkonen
and another conscript came upon the officers celebrating a wedding
not far from their unit at the Plesetsk cosmodrome in
northwestern Russia. The offi-cers thought the conscripts had fled
and beat them with army belts, and put Sinkonen in a ken-nel with
guard dogs, where he was found the next morning in serious
condition. Sinkonen died Aug 27.
(AP, 8/29/07)
2007 Aug 16, US authorities
indicted Igor Klopow (24), a Russian national, for his role in an ID
theft gang that targeted wealthy individuals. Klopow was lured to
the US and arrested under the Brooklyn Bridge.
(WSJ, 8/17/07, p.B2)
2007 Aug 17, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin said that he had ordered the military to re-sume
regular long-range flights of strategic bombers.
(AP, 8/17/07)
2007 Aug 17, The six members of
the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) held their first joint
maneuvers on Russian land in a demonstration of their growing
military ties and a shared desire to counter US global clout. The
presidents of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyr-gyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan attended the unprecedented joint military exercises in
Chelyabinsk near the Kazakh border.
(AFP, 8/17/07)
2007 Aug 21, Russian news
agencies reported that authorities have detained a high-level
narcotics officer they say was behind large-scale drug sales over
the Internet.
(AP, 8/21/07)
2007 Aug 22, Russia nominated
Josef Tosovsky, a former Czech prime minister and head of that
country's central bank, to head the International Monetary Fund, a
move that put the Krem-lin and the European Union at odds. The Czech
Republic repudiated the move and endorsed the EU’s choice.
(AP, 8/22/07)(WSJ, 8/23/07, p.A1)
2007 Aug 22, In Ingushetia,
Russia, one serviceman was killed and five were wounded when gunmen
attacked their armored personnel carrier with grenades and automatic
weapons fire.
(AP, 8/24/07)
2007 Aug 23, A Russian
scientist said that fresh test results back his country's legal bid
to take control of the Arctic. Russian geologists have previously
estimated the Arctic seabed has at least 9 to 10 billion tons of
fuel equivalent, about the same as Russia's total oil reserves.
(AP, 8/23/07)
2007 Aug 23, A shootout in
Chechnya's capital left two policemen and a rebel dead. A group of
about 30 camouflage-clad gunmen set on fire the houses of two police
officers and the local administration building in the Chechen
village of Yandi.
(AP, 8/24/07)
2007 Aug 23, In Dagestan,
Russia, gunmen ambushed security forces, killing three people and
wounding 17.
(AP, 8/24/07)
2007 Aug 24, Russia issued an
international warrant for the arrest of Mikhail Gutseriyev, two days
after the death in Moscow of his 21-year-old son. Chingiskhan
Gutseriyev died in his sleep after a minor car accident, raising
suspicions that he was killed to send a message to his father. On
Sep 5 a court upheld a warrant for his arrest and refused to lift a
freeze on the shares of his company, Russneft. The freeze has
blocked a sale that would have handed him an estimated $3 billion.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Aug 24, Georgia said it
fired on a Russian plane flying over its territory. The Tbilisi City
Court, behind closed doors, convicted 13 people from minor
opposition parties for plotting a vio-lent overthrow of the
government. Maia Topuria, the lead defendant and head of the
pro-Moscow Justice party, was sentenced to 8 ½ years in
prison.
(WSJ, 8/25/07,
p.A1)(www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=6353)
2007 Aug 25, A senior official
of the separatist region said a plane of uncertain origin went down
over Abkhazia, a day after Georgia reported that its forces fired on
a plane believed to be Russian that had violated the country's
airspace.
(AP, 8/25/07)
2007 Aug 27, Russia announced
the arrest of 10 people in the killing of journalist and Kremlin
critic Anna Politkovskaya. Russia's top prosecutor said a Chechen
crime boss, Russian police and security officers were involved in
the death of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya. But he suggested
that someone outside Russia masterminded the killing of the frequent
Kremlin critic.
(AP, 8/27/07)(AP, 8/27/08)
2007 Aug 31, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia will accept a partition of
Serbia's Kosovo province if that is the solution agreed by Belgrade
and Kosovo's ethnic Alba-nian majority. Both Serbia and the Kosovo
Albanians have said they oppose partition but they have shown no
sign of reaching agreement on the central issue of independence for
Kosovo.
(Reuters, 8/31/07)
2007 Aug 31, A car bomb
exploded near a police vehicle in Russia's troubled North Caucasus
region, killing four police officers in Nazran, Ingushetia.
(AP, 8/31/07)
2007 Sep 4, In Russia’s
Voronezh region an explosion killed three people at a sugar refinery
owned by Prodimex Group, one of the country's largest producers.
(Reuters, 9/4/07)
2007 Sep 4, Alain Robert
climbed to the top of Moscow’s 795-feet-high West Federation Tower,
in less than a half-hour using a ladder.
(AP, 9/5/07)
2007 Sep 6, Indonesia and
Russia signed a $1 billion defense deal that will allow Indonesia to
buy dozens of helicopters, tanks and submarines, part of visiting
Russian President Vladimir Putin's efforts to boost his country's
military clout in Asia.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 6, An unmanned Russian
rocket carrying a Japanese communications satellite mal-functioned
after liftoff, sending parts crashing in an uninhabited part of
Kazakhstan and trigger-ing concerns about environmental damage.
(AP, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 6, Australian PM John
Howard said he would tell Russian President Vladimir Putin that he
would not approve the sale of uranium to Moscow if there was any
possibility it could be resold to Iran or Syria.
(Reuters, 9/6/07)
2007 Sep 7, Leaders of
Australia and Russia signed a deal to export Australian uranium to
fuel Russian nuclear reactors, but promised it would not be
transferred to Iran's disputed atomic program.
(AP, 9/7/07)
2007 Sep 10, Lithuanian PM
Gediminas Kirkilas said at a Seimas session that Lithuania will
increase its tariffs for transiting natural gas to the Kaliningrad
region proportionally to any gas hikes in the price Russia charges
its Lithuanian customers.
(www.interfax.com/3/311558/news.aspx)
2007 Sep 11, State television
reported that the Russian military has successfully tested what it
described as the world's most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered
bomb. The Russian bomb is a "thermobaric" weapon that explodes in an
intense fireball combined with a devastating blast. It explodes in a
terrifying nuclear bomb-like mushroom cloud and wreaks destruction
through a massive shock wave created by the air burst and high
temperature.
(AP, 9/12/07)
2007 Sep 11, American, Russian
and Chinese nuclear experts began a rare visit to North Ko-rea to
examine ways of disabling the country's main nuclear facilities so
they can no longer pro-duce bombs.
(AP, 9/11/07)
2007 Sep 12, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin dismissed his long-serving PM Mikhail Frad-kov and
nominated little-known Cabinet official Victor Zubkov (b.1941) to
replace him in a sur-prise move that could put Zubkov in the running
to replace Putin next year.
(AP, 9/12/07)(WSJ, 9/13/07, p.A3)(Econ, 9/15/07,
p.64)
2007 Sep 12, Serbia warned the
EU it would not accept any decision on Kosovo taken outside the UN,
and its ally Russia told the US to stop backing Kosovo independence
while talks con-tinue.
(AP, 9/12/07)
2007 Sep 13, In Moscow Shamil
Burayev, the former head of a district in Chechnya, was ar-rested on
suspicion of organizing the execution-style murder of investigative
journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
(AP, 9/15/07)
2007 Sep 16, In Russia former
KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, the sole suspect in the radiation
poisoning death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, announced
plans to run for parlia-ment on the ticket of a pro-Kremlin
ultranationalist party.
(AP, 9/16/07)
2007 Sep 17, Sotheby's canceled
a London auction Set for Sep 18 after Alisher Usmanov, a Russian
tycoon paid about 25 percent more than the estimated price for the
art collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. A
government agency "presented some guarantees to Sotheby's that this
transaction would be in the interest of the Russian Federation."
(AP, 9/18/07)
2007 Sep 19, In Moscow Iraq's
foreign minister said Iraqi authorities have arrested a man
suspected of organizing the murder of four Russian diplomats in
Baghdad last year. Hoyshan Zebari identified the suspect as a man
named Abu Nur and said he was a member of the terror-ist group
al-Qaida in Iraq.
(AP, 9/19/07)
2007 Sep 20, Estonia decided it
will not allow a German-Russian consortium to conduct a survey of
its exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea for a planned
underwater gas pipeline.
(AP, 9/20/07)
2007 Sep 24, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin named a new government, tapping new eco-nomics and
health ministers and retaining his foreign and defense ministers in
an expected but largely cosmetic shuffle before parliamentary and
presidential elections.
(AP, 9/25/07)
2007 Sep 26, Russia unveiled
its regional 95-seat Superjet-100, a government-backed effort to
re-energize the country's ailing aviation industry and get into a
market now dominated by Bombardier and Embraer.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2007 Sep 30, Garry Kasparov,
former world chess champion, entered Russia's presidential race,
elected overwhelmingly as the candidate for the country's
beleaguered opposition coali-tion.
(AP, 9/30/07)
2007 Sep, In Russia
construction began in Moscow on Russia Tower, slated to be Europe’s
tallest building, at over 1900 feet, on completion in 2012.
(WSJ, 6/25/08, p.C14)
2007 Sep, Lotte, South Korea’s
biggest department store chain, opened its first foreign store in
Moscow, Russia.
(Econ, 6/28/08, p.72)
2007 Oct 1, President Vladimir
Putin said he would lead the dominant party's ticket in Decem-ber
parliamentary elections and suggested he could become prime
minister, the strongest sign yet that he will try to keep power
after he leaves office.
(AP, 10/1/07)
2007 Oct 3, In Russia workers
rebuilding a 19th century Moscow house dug up the remains of nearly
three dozen people. An estimated 34 people were found. Some of the
remains, which were found under a basement of a house on the estate,
had gunshot wounds to the skull and appeared to date back to the
1930s. Sergei Buluchevsky, a government investigator, later said
preliminary forensic findings indicated the remains were at least a
century old and that there were no signs of violent death.
(AP, 10/4/07)(AP, 10/18/07)
2007 Oct 3, Russian and US
space chiefs signed agreements in Moscow to cooperate on unmanned
missions that would search for potential water deposits beneath the
surface of the moon and Mars.
(AP, 10/3/07)
2007 Oct 6, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin said former Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov will be
appointed head of the country's foreign intelligence service.
(AP, 10/6/07)
2007 Oct 9, Alexander
Pichushkin (33), a Russian man accused of murdering 49 people, asked
a Moscow court to add another eleven victims to his tally, and told
a jury when he first strangled a man it was like falling in love for
the first time. He has been branded the 'chess-board murderer' by
Russian newspapers because he hoped to put a coin on every square of
a 64-place chessboard for each murder.
(Reuters, 10/9/07)
2007 Oct 10, A spokeswoman for
Other Russia said Russian electoral officials have barred the vocal
opposition alliance from participating in December parliamentary
elections. Election commission chief Vladimir Churov said Other
Russia was barred because it was not registered as a political
party.
(AP, 10/10/07)
2007 Oct 10, A Russian rocket
blasted off from Kazakhstan's Baikonur launch pad, carrying 3
astronauts to the international space station. Sheikh Muszaphar
Shukor, an orthopedic surgeon and university lecturer from Kuala
Lumpur, left Earth alongside Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and
American astronaut Peggy Whitson. Shukor was selected from among
11,000 Malaysian candidates to fly aboard the ISS in a deal his
government arranged with Rus-sia as part of a $1 billion purchase of
Russian fighter jets. Whitson will be the first woman to command the
outpost.
(Reuters, 9/20/07)(AP, 10/10/07)(SFC, 10/11/07,
p.A8)
2007 Oct 13, US Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice, after meeting with human-rights activ-ists
in Moscow, told reporters the Russian government under Vladimir
Putin had amassed so much central authority that the power-grab
could undermine its commitment to democracy.
(AP, 10/13/08)
2007 Oct 15,
In Germany Pres. Putin held talks with German Chancellor
Angela Merkel on the sidelines of a German-Russian political
conference called the Petersburg Dialogue.
(AFP, 10/15/07)
2007 Oct 15, Russia’s
Agriculture Minister Alexei Gordeyev said that major food producers
and retailers had agreed to fix their prices at the current level
following talks with the govern-ment. The prices for basic foods
will be fixed until January 31, 2008, a period which covers
par-liamentary elections.
(www.prime-tass.com/news/show.asp?topicid=54&id=428507)(Econ,
10/27/07, p.63)
2007 Oct 16, In
Iran Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian
counterpart and implicitly warned the US not to use a former Soviet
republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said na-tions should
not pursue oil pipeline projects that are not backed by regional
powers.
(AP, 10/16/07)
2007 Oct 16, A revolt at a
Russian prison for minors, in the Sverdlovsk region in the Ural
Mountains, swelled into a mass uprising that left two people dead
and buildings gutted before guards and riot police restored order.
(AP, 10/17/07)
2007 Oct 17, Interfax reported
that Russia has charged a lieutenant colonel in the security service
and 8 others for the Oct 7, 2006, slaying of anti-Kremlin journalist
Ann Politkovskaya.
(WSJ, 10/18/07, p.A1)(Reuters,
10/17/07)
2007 Oct 18,
Israeli PM Ehud Olmert flew to Moscow in a surprise visit to
discuss Iran's nu-clear program with President Vladimir Putin, who
just returned from talks with Iranian leaders in Tehran. Olmert
pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin to support new sanctions
against Iran over its nuclear activities and urged Russia not to
sell arms to Iran or Syria.
(AP, 10/18/07)
2007 Oct 20, In Moscow a group
of teens killed Sergei Nikolayev (46), a professional chess player
from Yakutia. The group attacked more than 10 people over several
months late this year. In 2008 a Moscow court convicted 12 teenage
boys and a man of committing the series of vicious ethnic attacks,
which were videotaped, set to heavy music and widely disseminated on
Web sites.
(http://english.pravda.ru/russia/history/23-09-2008/106430-skinheads-0)(AP,
9/23/08)
2007 Oct 21, A technical glitch
sent a Soyuz spacecraft on a wild ride home, forcing Malay-sia's
first space traveler and two Russian cosmonauts to endure eight
times the force of gravity before their capsule landed safely.
(AP, 10/21/07)
2007 Oct 23,
A bomb courier accidentally blew up a taxi in Russia's
Dagestan region, killing herself and wounding eight other people.
(AP, 10/23/07)
2007 Oct 24, Alexander
Pichushkin (33), a Russian former grocery clerk, was found guilty of
murdering 48 people in Moscow. On Oct 29 he was sentenced to life in
a hard labor colony.
(AP, 10/24/07)(AP, 10/29/07)
2007 Oct 25, Amnesty
International said human rights violations in the Russian region of
In-gushetia have increased with a surge in abductions and beatings.
(AP, 10/25/07)
2007 Oct 28, A Moscow court
sentenced Alexander Pichushkin, convicted of 48 murders, to life
imprisonment, ending one of Russia's worst serial killer cases.
(AP, 10/29/08)
2007 Oct 31, A bomb ripped
through a passenger bus in the central Russian city of Togliatti,
killing eight people and injuring 48. Togliatti is a city on the
Volga River known as the headquar-ters of Russia's largest carmaker,
AvtoVAZ, which returned to state control in 2005. The city has a
reputation for gang violence as varying groups have competed for
control over the lucra-tive factory.
(AP, 10/31/07)
2007 Oct, Russian oil
production peaked at 9.9 million barrels a day. The state creamed
off as much as 92% of profits hindering incentives for production
and development.
(Econ, 5/10/08, p.71)
2007 Nov 2, Igor Moiseyev
(101), called the king of folk dance, died in Moscow. In 1937 he
founded the Moiseyev Dance Company which went on to inspire folk
dance companies in many other countries.
(SFC, 11/3/07, p.B5)
2007 Nov 3, In Russia some
1,500 people, half of them pensioners, marched through St.
Pe-tersburg chanting anti-Kremlin slogans and banging saucepans in
protest against rising food prices.
(Reuters, 11/3/07)
2007 Nov 4, Some 5,000
nationalists turned out for the Russian March, held for the third
year on National Unity Day, a holiday the Kremlin created in 2005 to
replace the traditional Nov. 7 celebration of the 1917 Bolshevik
rise to power. Preston Wiginton (43), a white supremacist from
Texas, addressed thousands of Russian nationalists at the rally. A
fire tore through a nurs-ing home in Russia, killing at least 31
people, the latest in a series of deadly blazes that have
underscored negligence and other problems plaguing state-run
institutions.
(AP, 11/4/07)(AP, 11/5/07)
2007 Nov 11, A severe storm
broke the Volganeft-139, a small Russian oil tanker, in two in the
Strait of Kerch, spilling at least 560,000 gallons of fuel into the
strait between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. A Russian official
said it was an "environmental disaster." 8 seamen were left missing.
Two freighters nearby also sank under 18-foot waves in storm. As
many as 10 ships sank or ran aground in the area.
(AP, 11/11/07)(Reuters, 11/12/07)(SFC, 11/12/07,
p.A15)
2007 Nov 12, Alexander
Tkachyov, governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region, said more than
30,000 birds and countless fish have been killed in an "ecological
catastrophe" wrought by thousands of tons of oil from a tanker that
broke apart in a heavy storm near the Black Sea. 3 bodies washed
ashore and 20 sailors remained missing after the sinking of at least
11 ships.
(AP, 11/12/07)(SFC, 11/13/07, p.A10)
2007 Nov 13, The British Virgin
Islands told the US there is overwhelming evidence that Leonid
Reiman, Russia’s Telecommunications Minister owns much of Russia’s
telecom industry through an offshore fund.
(WSJ, 11/14/07, p.A1)
2007 Nov 15, Sergei Storchak,
one of Russia’s top authorities on international financial
rela-tions, was detained. Investigators on Nov 19 revealed details
in the arrest of the deputy finance minister who allegedly tried to
embezzle $43 million in budget funds.
(AP, 11/19/07)
2007 Nov 15, A top Russian
general said that Russia has completed its withdrawal of troops that
had been based in Georgia since the Soviet collapse. He said
peacekeepers remained in Abkhazia along with forces in South Ossetia
with the participation of Georgia.
(AP, 11/14/07)
2007 Nov 16, The Organization
for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said its elec-tion
observers would be unable to monitor next month's Russian
parliamentary balloting be-cause Moscow had refused to issue them
visas. All 56 OSCE member countries, including Russia, agreed in
1990 to invite international observers to monitor their elections.
(AP, 11/16/07)
2007 Nov 19, The US and Russia
announced an agreement on how to safely dispose 34 met-ric tons of
Russian weapons-grade plutonium.
(SFC, 11/20/07, p.A11)
2007 Nov 20, President Vladimir
Putin said that Russia's decision to suspend its participation in a
key arms control treaty was a necessary response to NATO
"muscle-flexing" near its fron-tiers. The 1990 Conventional Forces
in Europe (CFE) treaty, which originally set limits on weap-ons of
NATO and Warsaw Pact countries, was revised in 1999. Russia ratified
the updated treaty in 2004, but the US and other NATO members have
refused to follow suit, saying Mos-cow first must fulfill
obligations to withdraw forces from Georgia and from Moldova's
separatist Trans-Dniester region.
(AP, 11/20/07)
2007 Nov 22, A passenger bus
caught fire and exploded in southern Russia, killing at least five
people and wounding 12. Investigators in North Ossetia said
terrorism was the likely cause.
(AP, 11/23/07)
2007 Nov 23, Vladimir Kryuchkov
(83), the Soviet Union's former KGB chief and one of Rus-sia's most
influential hardline spy masters, died. Kryuchkov's biggest failure
was the defection to Britain in 1985 of Oleg Gordievsky, the highest
ranking KGB defector in its history.
(Reuters, 11/25/07)
2007 Nov 24, Russian police in
Moscow detained opposition leader and former world chess champion
Garry Kasparov and several other anti-Kremlin protesters when
thousands of people marched against President Vladimir Putin.
(Reuters, 11/24/07)
2007 Nov 25, Dozens of members
of a Russian opposition party and other activists were de-tained by
police as they tried to gather for a protest rally in central St.
Petersburg.
(AP, 11/25/07)
2007 Nov 27, PM Donald Tusk
announced that Poland will drop its opposition to Moscow's bid to
join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) in a drive to im-prove ties with Russia.
(AP, 11/27/07)
2007 Nov 29, In Russia tycoon
and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky was convicted in absentia of
embezzling millions of dollars from the national airline, Aeroflot,
and reportedly sentenced to six years in prison.
(AP, 11/29/07)
2007 Nov 30, President Vladimir
Putin signed a law suspending Russia's participation in the
Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.
(AP, 11/30/07)
2007 Nov 30, In Russia fund
manager Oleg Shvartsman said in an interview in Kommersant, a
mainstream business newspaper, that his $3.2 billion fund was
closely connected to the Kremlin’s administration and security
services. Shvartsman said he reported indirectly to Igor Sechin,
chair of the Rosneft oil company.
(Econ, 12/8/07, p.60)
2007 Dec 2, Russians voted in a
parliamentary election. Putin's United Russia party swept 70 percent
of seats in parliament.
(AP, 12/2/07)(AP, 12/3/07)
2007 Dec 3, Foreign observers
and Russian opposition groups accused authorities of ma-nipulating a
sweeping parliamentary election victory for the party of President
Vladimir Putin, who hailed the results as a validation of his
leadership. With ballots from nearly 98 percent of precincts
counted, Putin's United Russia party was leading with 64.1 percent
of the vote. Europe joined the US in demanding Russia investigate
alleged abuses in the election, and Germany denounced the poll as
undemocratic.
(AP, 12/3/07)(Reuters, 12/3/07)
2007 Dec 3, A Moscow court
convicted Igor Reshetin, the head of the company TsNIIMASH-Export, a
rocket and space technology company, on charges of leaking sensitive
technology to China. This was the latest case involving a Russian
scientist who was prosecuted despite claims the sensitive materials
were in the public domain. Reshetin was sentenced to 11 1/2 years in
prison after prosecutors said the information Reshetin had handed
over to the Chinese could be used for building missiles capable of
carrying nuclear warheads.
(AP, 12/3/07)
2007 Dec 9, A blast on a bus in
Russia’s Stavropol region killed two people. An exploding gas
canister was suspected.
(Reuters, 12/9/07)
2007 Dec 10, President Vladimir
Putin threw his support behind first Deputy PM Dmitry Med-vedev
(b.1965) as his successor, saying that electing him president would
keep Russia on the same course of the past eight years. Medvedev
also served as chairman of AOA Gazprom, the state-controlled energy
giant.
(AP, 12/10/07)(WSJ, 12/11/07, p.A22)
2007 Dec 11, A judge from the
top court in southern Russia's violence-plagued Dagestan re-gion was
fatally shot by an unidentified attacker. Dagestan Supreme Court
Justice Kurban Pa-shayev was shot more than 10 times with a pistol
in the entranceway of his apartment building in the provincial
capital, Makhachkala. In Ingushetia an 18-year-old rookie in an
elite police unit was fatally shot by attackers who fired at him at
close range from a passing car as he was walk-ing home after work.
(AP, 12/11/07)
2007 Dec 12, Russia ordered a
British cultural organization to suspend all of its operations
outside Moscow at the beginning of 2008, the latest move in a
long-running dispute. Russian of-ficials accused the British
Council, a non-governmental organization that acts as the cultural
department of the British Embassy, of operating illegally in St.
Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
(AP, 12/12/07)
2007 Dec 12, Veteran diplomat
Yuli Vorontsov (78), who served the Soviet Union and Russia as
ambassador to Afghanistan (1988-99) and the United States
(1994-2000) in a career span-ning the Cold War and the Gulf War,
died in Moscow.
(AP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 13, Opposition leader
Garry Kasparov said the Kremlin has stopped him from run-ning for
president by preventing his supporters from meeting to nominate him.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 13, Russia and Iran
reached agreement on a schedule for finishing construction of a
nuclear power plant that plays a central role in the international
tensions over Iran's atomic program, Russian news agencies reported.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 13, Japan said that
Russia seized four Japanese fishing boats in disputed waters between
the two countries, calling the detention unacceptable and demanding
an explanation from Moscow.
(AP, 12/13/07)
2007 Dec 14, The leaders
Belarus and Russia pledged closer cooperation on military, eco-nomic
and foreign policy but gave no indication that the ex-Soviet
neighbors were moving closer to a long-discussed full merger.
(AP, 12/14/07)
2007 Dec 15, Russia's
state-controlled gas monopoly said Belarus will pay nearly 20
percent more for Russian gas beginning next year.
(AP, 12/15/07)
2007 Dec 16, Russian
authorities expelled a Moldovan journalist critical of the Kremlin
in a move condemned by media watchdogs.
(AP, 12/16/07)
2007 Dec 17, Russian President
Vladimir Putin said he was ready to become prime minister if his
close ally Dmitry Medvedev succeeds him, giving Putin a way to keep
a grip on power after he leaves the Kremlin.
(Reuters, 12/17/07)
2007 Dec 17, Iranian Vice
President Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said the first nuclear fuel shipment
for the Bushehr atomic power plant has arrived in Iran from Russia.
Aghazadeh said the Bushehr plant was 95 percent complete and would
begin operations next year.
(AP, 12/17/07)
2007 Dec 19, Time magazine
named Russian President Vladimir Putin its 2007 "Person of the
Year."
(AP, 12/19/07)
2007 Dec 25, Russia's military
successfully test-fired a new intercontinental ballistic missile
capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads, a weapon intended to
replace aging Soviet-era missiles.
(AP, 12/25/07)
2007 Dec 25, Oleg Ugnivenko, a
spokesman for the regional branch of Russia's Emergency Situations
Ministry, said more than 600,000 chickens on the Gulyai-Borisovskaya
farm in the Rostov-on-Don region have been destroyed to prevent the
virus from spreading.
(AP, 12/25/07)
2007 Dec 26, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship carrying 2 tons of supplies including holiday
gifts, docked at the international space station.
(AP, 12/26/07)
2007 Dec 26, Iran's defense
minister said that Iran had agreed to buy an S-300 surface-to-air
missile system from Russia.
(Reuters, 12/26/07)
2007 Dec 28, Iran received the
second shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia for a power plant being
constructed in the southern Iranian town of Bushehr.
(AP, 12/28/07)
2007 Arkady Babchenko, Russian
soldier, authored “A Soldier’s War in Chechnya,” an ac-count of his
service in Chechnya. In 2008 it was translated to English by Nick
Allen and pub-liched as “One Soldier’s War.”
(Econ, 11/17/07, p.100)(WSJ, 1/22/08, p.D8)
2007 Yegor Gaidar (1956-2009),
former Russian finance minister and prime minister, au-thored
“Collapse of an Empire.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yegor_Gaidar)
2007 Garry Kasparov, world
chess champion (1985-2000) and current candidate for the presidency
of Russia, authored “How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves
from the Board to the Boardroom.”
(WSJ, 10/25/07, p.D8)
2007 Pres. Putin promoted a new
Russian history manual for teachers entitled “A Modern His-tory of
Russia: 1945-2006.” Professor Oksana Gaman-Golutvina said the
material published in the book did not correspond to what she wrote
and said: "I really do not want my name to be associated with this
disgrace."
(Econ, 11/10/07, p.67)(http://tinyurl.com/355n8p)
2007 Four Russian defense
officials were sentenced this year to up to 11 years in jail for
sell-ing missile delivery technologies to Beijing for $2 million.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2007 The US with a population
of 301,139,947 counted 1,498,157 soldiers on active duty (~4.9%);
China with a population of 1,321,851,888 counted 2,105,000 soldiers
on active duty (~.159%). Russia with a population of 141,377,752
counted 1,027,000 soldiers on active duty (~7.2%); These numbers
excluded paramilitary troops in China and Russia.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.W5)
2008 Jan 1, Britain defied a
Russian order to close the regional offices of its cultural arm from
New Year's day, but there was no evidence of Russian attempts to
forcibly close British Council centers.
(Reuters, 1/1/08)
2008 Jan 4, Russian rescuers
saved 11 people stranded for nearly three months in a remote area of
the Pacific coast after a fishing trip went wrong. Their two boats
were damaged in a storm on October 10 during a fishing expedition
off the Kamchatka Peninsula.
(Reuters, 1/4/08)
2008 Jan 9, A natural gas blast
ripped through an apartment building in Russia's Tatarstan region,
killing at least seven people.
(AP, 1/9/08)
2008 Jan 10, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin named a prominent nationalist politician as
ambassador to NATO at a time of severely strained ties between the
two.
(AP, 1/10/08)
2008 Jan 14, Russia’s Foreign
Ministry said no more visas will be issued for new British Council
expatriate employees in Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg,
accreditation renewals for existing employees will be blocked and a
tax inquiry will be launched against the Saint Peters-burg office
after a British cultural organization reopened offices in defiance
of an order to close. Russia last month ordered the closure of the
two regional offices of the British Council, a non-profit
organization that acts as the cultural arm of the British Embassy,
saying they were operat-ing illegally.
(AFP, 1/14/08)(AP, 1/14/08)
2008 Jan 15, Britain and Russia
traded threats and recrimination as a diplomatic feud over the role
of the British government's cultural arm worsened.
(Reuters, 1/15/08)
2008 Jan 16, Russia warned
Kosovo's leaders that if they declare independence the territory
will never become a member of the UN or other international
political institutions.
(AP, 1/16/08)
2008 Jan 16, A British cultural
organization accused Russian authorities of harassing its staff and
said it had temporarily closed its offices in St. Petersburg.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 17, Britain accused
Russia of "conduct not worthy of a great country" after what it
called a campaign of intimidation by security services forced its
cultural centers in two Russian cities to halt operations.
(AP, 1/17/08)
2008 Jan 18, Russian President
Vladimir Putin clinched a key pipeline deal with Bulgaria that
strengthens Moscow's grip on European gas markets before issuing a
stern warning about the future status of Kosovo.
(AP, 1/18/08)
2008 Jan 21, Latvia's Foreign
Ministry declared a Russian diplomat persona non grata, citing a
report that he was a threat to national security. On Jan 25 Russia
said it will expel a Latvian diplomat in apparent retaliation. Some
400,000 non-citizens lived in Latvia. Ethnic Russians ac-counted for
a third of the country's population of 2.3 million.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Jan 22, Serbia agreed to a
multi-billion-dollar gas pipeline project as part of an energy deal
with Russia. This would boost Moscow’s control over gas supplies to
Europe.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A4)
2008 Jan 23, Russia said a new
draft UN resolution on Iran's disputed nuclear program does not call
for any harsh sanctions, and the Iranian president said new measures
would not deter the country in its pursuit of nuclear technology.
(AP, 1/23/08)
2008 Jan 23, Police in Moscow
arrested Semyon Mogilevich, a suspected crime boss with al-leged
links to Russia's multibillion dollar gas business. Mogilevich, a
Ukrainian-born Russian citizen, has long been sought by the FBI and
Interpol.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Jan 24, Russian election
officials said Mikhail Kasyanov, the only liberal Kremlin critic in
the presidential race, stands to be kept off the ballot because tens
of thousands of signatures on his nominating petitions were
forgeries. In Moscow Semyon Mogilevich, a businessman wanted by
Interpol, was arrested on tax evasion charges.
(AP, 1/24/08)(Econ, 3/15/08, p.73)
2008 Jan 24, Iran received a
sixth shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia, destined for a power
plant being constructed in the southern port of Bushehr.
(AP, 1/24/08)
2008 Jan 24, In Switzerland the
country's supreme court said prosecutors acted within the law when
they froze funds belonging to the Russian central bank at the behest
of a Swiss firm. The funds were frozen over a legal dispute with
Geneva-based trading firm Noga dating back to the end of the Soviet
era.
(AP, 1/24/08)
2008 Jan 25, Russia's lower
house of parliament annulled an agreement with Ukraine on us-ing
Soviet-built military radars, citing Kiev's bid to join NATO.
(AP, 1/25/08)
2008 Jan 26, Russian riot
police fired warning shots into the air and beat demonstrators who
tried to rally against alleged vote-rigging in the Muslim region of
Ingushetia.
(AP, 1/26/08)
2008 Jan 27, Mikhail Kasyanov,
former prime minister and the most vocal Kremlin critic in Russia's
presidential contest, was barred from the ballot by election
authorities who said tens of thousands of signatures on his
nominating petitions were faked. Kasyanov denounced the Cen-tral
Election Commission's ruling as politically motivated and described
the election as "farce." "I have no doubt that Putin personally made
the decision not to register my candidacy," he said in a statement.
(AP, 1/27/08)
2008 Jan 28, Iran received the
final shipment of uranium fuel from Russia for its first nuclear
plant, state media reported, a key step toward the launch of the
reactor's operations expected later this year.
(AP, 1/28/08)
2008 Jan 30, President Vladimir
Putin and his likely successor called for sweeping environ-mental
improvements, saying cleaning up Soviet-era pollution and reducing
industrial waste are crucial for Russia's economy and public health.
(AP, 1/30/08)
2008 Jan 30, Imprisoned Russian
oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky launched a hunger strike to protest
authorities' refusal to give his jailed ex-lawyer AIDS medication.
(AP, 1/30/08)
2008 Feb 6, A Russian court
suspended the trial of Vasily Aleksanian, an ailing former
execu-tive of the dismantled oil giant Yukos, but refused to release
him from jail to be treated for AIDS-related cancer and
tuberculosis.
(AP, 2/6/08)
2008 Feb 7, The OSCE’s election
monitoring organization said that it will not observe Russia's
presidential election next month because of the "severe
restrictions" imposed by the Kremlin.
(AP, 2/7/08)
2008 Feb 8, Iraqi President
Jalal Talabani welcomed an expected Russian decision to write off 91
percent of Iraq's estimated $13 billion debt, calling it a "historic
turning point" in relations between the two countries. 5 American
soldiers were killed in two roadside bombings, 4 in Baghdad and one
in Tamim province.
(AP, 2/8/08)(AP, 2/9/08)
2008 Feb 12, Russia agreed to
eliminate a murky middleman company from its gas trade with Ukraine
in exchange for 50% share of Ukraine’s domestic gas market.
(WSJ, 2/13/08, p.A5)
2008 Feb 12, China and Russia
challenged the United States at a disarmament debate by formally
presenting a plan to ban weapons in space, a proposal that
Washington has called a diplomatic ploy by the two nations to gain a
military advantage.
(AP, 2/12/08)
2008 Feb 15, Sova, a Russian
human rights group, said hate crimes in Russia have killed 17 people
and injured more than 50 others since the beginning of the year.
(AP, 2/15/08)
2008 Feb 17, Kosovo declared
itself a nation, mounting a historic bid to become an "inde-pendent
and democratic state" backed by the US and key European allies but
bitterly contested by Serbia and Russia. Kosovo’s parliament
approved a new flag, a blue background with a yel-low map of the
Connecticut-sized province. Russia denounced Kosovo's independence
declara-tion and called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security
Council, underlining its opposition.
(AP, 2/17/08)(SFC, 2/18/08, p.A13)
2008 Feb 20, Yevgeny Adamov,
the former atomic energy minister whom Washington ac-cused of
stealing millions in U.S. government funds earmarked for bolstering
security at Rus-sian nuclear plants, was sentenced Wednesday to 5
½ years in prison.
(AP, 2/20/08)
2008 Feb, Renault SA invested
$1 billion for a 25% stake in Russian car maker OAO Avtovaz.
(WSJ, 3/21/08, p.A1)(Econ, 6/7/08, p.74)
2008 Mar 2, Russians voted for
a new president in an election likely to hand victory to First
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, President Vladimir Putin's
chosen successor, but criti-cized by the opposition for a lack of
real competition. With 99.45 percent of the votes counted, Medvedev
had 70.23 percent.
(Reuters, 3/2/08)(AP, 3/3/08)
2008 Mar 3, Russia quelled
protests in Moscow following the elections and reduced natural gas
supplies to Ukraine over $600 million in alleged nonpayments for
past deliveries.
(WSJ, 3/4/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 4, China and Russia
scuttled a Western attempt to introduce a resolution on Iran's
nuclear defiance at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy
Agency.
(AP, 3/4/08)
2008 Mar 5, Russia's state gas
monopoly announced that it was ending a reduction in natural gas
supplies to Ukraine after the two countries' presidents and gas
company chiefs reached an agreement aimed at ending a debt and
contract dispute.
(AP, 3/5/08)
2008 Mar 6, Viktor Bout, a
suspected Russian arms dealer, was arrested at a five-star hotel in
downtown Bangkok on allegations that he supplied Colombian rebels
with arms and explosives. He had been accused of flouting UN
embargoes and was wanted by Interpol.
(AP, 3/6/08)
2008 Mar 8, India awarded
Russia a 965-million-dollar contract to upgrade its multi-role
MiG-29 warplanes. The two post-Cold War allies signed the deal to
extend the life of India's fleet of 70 MiG-29 jets another 15 years
from their current 25 years.
(AFP, 3/10/08)
2008 Mar 11, Serbia and Russia
demanded that the UN administration in Kosovo halt the transfer of
authority to the European Union, calling a handover illegal and
declaring they will never recognize the independence of the Serb
province.
(AP, 3/12/08)
2008 Mar 12, Russia agreed to
extradite Yair Gal Klein, an Israeli mercenary, to Colombia. He was
arrested last year and is accused of training FARC guerrillas.
(Econ, 3/15/08, p.73)
2008 Mar 14, Russian forces
raided a forest camp in the volatile North Caucasus province of
Dagestan, leading to a shootout in which six suspected militants, a
police officer and an Interior Ministry servicemen died.
(AP, 3/14/08)
2008 Mar 19, In the Russian
region of Chechnya 9 people were been killed in an hour-long clash
between police and unidentified gunmen.
(AP, 3/20/08)
2008 Mar 20, A Russian air
force Su-25 fighter jet blew up in flight near the Far East city of
Vladivostok and the pilot was killed.
(AP, 3/20/08)
2008 Mar 21, In Moscow
firefighters found the body of Channel One correspondent Ilyas
Shurpayev (32) in his apartment with stab wounds and a belt around
his neck. He was a native of the mostly Muslim Dagestan province and
had worked in Russia's violence-ridden North Caucasus, which
includes Dagestan and war-scarred Chechnya. Dagestan. On March 31
offi-cials said that two men from Tajikistan have admitted robbing
and killing Shurpayev.
(AP, 3/21/08)(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 24, A car bomb
exploded outside a bank in southern Russia's violence-plagued
In-gushetia region, wounding at least five people.
(AP, 3/24/08)
2008 Mar 25, Air travel between
Georgia and Russia resumed, more than 17 months after Moscow
suspended flights because of tension between the ex-Soviet
neighbors.
(AP, 3/25/08)
2008 March 29, Azerbaijan
customs halted a shipment of Russian equipment for Iran’s first
nuclear power plant. The equipment was released May 1.
(WSJ, 5/2/08, p.A8)
2008 Apr 2, Russia's foreign
minister said that Moscow will not allow newly independent Kos-ovo
to become a member of the UN.
(AP, 4/2/08)
2008 Apr 2, Pyotr Kuznetsov,
leader of a Russian doomsday cult, apparently tried to kill him-self
after most of his followers abandoned a bunker where they had been
awaiting the end of the world for five months. The last 9 of 35 cult
members emerged on May 16.
(Reuters, 4/4/08)(SFC, 5/17/08, p.A3)
2008 Apr 4, Russian President
Vladimir Putin strongly criticized NATO's eastward expansion plans
but ruled out chances of a new Cold War, insisting that Moscow wants
to be friends with the Western military alliance.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 4, In Russia an
explosion, apparently caused by an accident with gas-powered welding
equipment in an apartment, ripped through a Moscow apartment tower,
blowing out ex-terior walls, sparking a fire and killing at least
three people.
(AP, 4/4/08)
2008 Apr 6, In Russia President
George W. Bush and Russia's Vladimir Putin ended their last
face-to-face meeting as heads of state with warm words for each
other but no solution to their row over missile defense.
(Reuters, 4/6/08)
2008 Apr 8, A Russian capsule
carrying South Korea's first astronaut and two cosmonauts blasted
off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, en route to the
international space station.
(AP, 4/8/08)
2008 Apr 13, Khasan Yandiyev
(51), a top judge in Russia's southern troubled province of
In-gushetia, was shot dead. He had led trials of Islamic rebels.
(Reuters, 4/13/08)
2008 Apr 13, The winners of
this year’s Goldman Awards were reported to be: Feliciano dos Santos
(43) of Mozambique, the director of Estamos, an environmental group
promoting sanita-tion, sustainable development and reforestation;
Marina Rikhvanova (46), founder of Baikal En-vironmental Wave, which
forced the rerouting of an oil pipeline in the Baikal basin; Pablo
Fa-jardo (35) and Luis Yanza (48) of Ecuador, co-founders of the
Amazon Defense Front, which accused Texaco (now Chevron) of dumping
oil and wastewater into local streams; Rosa Hilda Ramos (63) of
Puerto Rico, head of a movement to protect the Las Cicharillas
Marsh; Ignace Schops (43) of Belgium, head of a movement to
establish Belgium’s 1st and only national park; Jesus Leon (42) of
Mexico, co-founder of the Center for Integral Small Farmer
Development of the Mixtec (CEDICAM).
(SSFC, 4/13/08, p.A4)
2008 Apr 15, President Vladimir
Putin accepted the leadership of the dominant United Russia party,
securing his grip on power after he leaves the Kremlin and becomes
PM next month.
(AP, 4/15/08)
2008 Apr 15, Brazil and Russia
signed an agreement to jointly develop top-line jet fighters and
satellite launch vehicles.
(AP, 4/16/08)
2008 Apr 16, Libyan leader
Moamer Kadhafi hailed Russian President Vladimir Putin's official
visit as "historic and strategic" during a state dinner at the Bab
Azizia palace.
(AFP, 4/17/08)
2008 Apr 17, Russian President
Vladimir Putin wrapped up his two-day visit with Libyan leader
Moammar Gadhafi by writing off $4.5 billion in Libyan debts in
exchange for multibillion-dollar deals for Russian companies.
(AP, 4/17/08)
2008 Apr 17, In
Italy Silvio Berlusconi returned to the
world diplomatic stage by hosting Rus-sian President Vladimir Putin
at his villa in Sardinia. The event lost some of its luster when
Putin was forced, before the glare of television cameras, to deny
reports he had secretly divorced his wife and planned to marry an
Olympic gymnast.
(Reuters, 4/18/08)
2008 Apr 19, In northern
Kazakhstan a Soyuz capsule, carrying South Korean bioengineer Yi
So-yeon, American astronaut Peggy Whitson and Russian flight
engineer Yuri Malenchenko, landed 260 miles off its mark.
(AP, 4/19/08)
2008 Apr 20, Russia closed down
a plutonium producing reactor in Seversk, marking a mile-stone in US
nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
(AP, 4/20/08)
2008 Apr 20, A Georgian
unmanned reconnaissance flight was shot down over the Georgian rebel
region of Abkhazia. The next day Georgia's air force commander said
a Russian fighter jet shot down the spy plane as it flew over
Abkhazia, but Russia said it had been shot down by separatist forces
and that the flight violated UN ceasefire agreements. A UN report on
May 26 said a Russian jet shot down the spy drone.
(Reuters, 4/22/08)(AP, 4/22/08)(SFC, 5/27/08,
p.A12)
2008 Apr 28, Iran and Russia
discussed the outlines of "serious proposals" aimed at assuring the
international community that Tehran's nuclear program is peaceful,
state media reported.
(AP, 4/28/08)
2008 Apr 28, Russia ordered two
American military attaches at the US Embassy in Moscow to leave the
country following the expulsion of a pair of Russian diplomats from
Washington. One Russian military officer was ordered to leave
Washington in November last year. The second was ordered to leave on
April 22.
(AP, 5/8/08)
2008 Apr 29, Russia announced
it was beefing up its peacekeeping force in Georgia's break-away
Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, saying it had evidence Tbilisi
was readying its forces for an attack.
(Reuters, 4/29/08)
2008 Apr 29, European nations
failed to convince Lithuania to allow the EU to launch talks on a
new partnership pact with Russia.
(AFP, 4/29/08)
2008 May 1, Russia said an
extra contingent of its troops had begun arriving in Georgia's
breakaway region of Abkhazia, a move Tbilisi said was an illegal act
of military aggression.
(AP, 5/1/08)
2008 May 6, Russia and the US
signed a long awaited civilian nuclear cooperation pact that will
allow firms from the world's two biggest atomic powers to expand
bilateral nuclear trade.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 7, Dmitry Medvedev was
inaugurated as Russia's president, pledging to bolster the country's
economic development and civil rights, in what may signal a
departure from his predecessor's heavy-handed tactics.
(AP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 8, Vladimir Putin was
named prime minister of Russia after a fervent speech full of
ambitious plans that overshadowed his low-key successor and
suggested that he will keep a strong hand in ruling the country.
(AP, 5/8/08)
2008 May 15, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship blasted off with supplies, equipment and gifts
for the international space station.
(AP, 5/15/08)
2008 May 20, In Russia Pres.
Medvedev convened top officials and lawyers to set up a task force
aimed at cleaning up the weak and often corrupt court system.
(WSJ, 5/21/08, p.A13)
2008 May 21, In Moscow, Russia,
Manchester United prevailed over Chelsea in the soccer final of the
Champions League.
(Econ, 5/24/08, p.77)
2008 May 23, China and Russia
jointly condemned a US plan for a global missile defense system at
the start of a highly symbolic visit by new Russian President Dmitry
Medvedev.
(AP, 5/23/08)
2008 May 24, Russia won the
Eurovision song contest in Belgrade with "Believe", sung by Dima
Bilan, giving an eastern European nation victory for the third time
in five years.
(AFP, 5/25/08)
2008 May 25, EU foreign
ministers approved much delayed plans to begin talks with Russia
aimed at forging a new "strategic partnership."
(AP, 5/26/08)
2008 May 26, A Russian an An-12
cargo plane crashed near Chelyabinsk, Siberia, killing all 9 people
onboard.
(SFC, 5/27/08, p.A3)
2008 Jun 1, Gay rights
activists held small, scattered protests in Moscow, flouting
repeated refusals from city authorities for permission to hold
parades or demonstrations.
(AP, 6/1/08)
2008 Jun 3, In Sweden world
chess star turned political activist Garry Kasparov told world news
industry leaders that PM Vladimir Putin had assaulted press freedoms
in Russia, and urged them to challenge Kremlin leaders over the
issue.
(AP, 6/4/08)
2008 Jun 5, The European
Parliament called for the peacekeeping mandate for Russian troops in
the breakaway Georgian region of Abkhazia to be revised. The chamber
also de-manded the EU sends its own border mission into the conflict
zone in Abkhazia.
(AP, 6/5/08)
2008 Jun 6, Russia's new Pres.
Medvedev met with leaders of a fractious alliance of ex-Soviet
republics, warning Ukraine and Georgia not to lead their countries
into NATO.
(AP, 6/6/08)
2008 Jun 8, An unidentified
gunman shot and killed a police officer in the city of Nazran in the
province of Ingushetia.
(AP, 6/9/08)
2008 Jun 9, Russia and Norway
met for 2-days talks in the hope of making progress in a
dec-ades-old dispute over their maritime border in the Barents Sea,
a part of the Arctic that could hold large oil and gas reserves.
After visiting the Norwegian town of Kirkenes, the ministers will go
to Murmansk in northwest Russia.
(AP, 6/9/08)
2008 Jun 9, A soldier and a
police officer were killed when unidentified gunmen fired at a train
carrying troops from Chechnya that had pulled in to the town of
Khasavyurt in the republic of Dagestan.
(AP, 6/9/08)
2008 Jun 12, UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told Kosovo's leaders he intends to
re-shape the UN mission there to allow the EU to take on key tasks,
according to a letter in the let-ter to Kosovo President Fatmir
Sejdiu. Russia demanded disciplinary action against the head of the
UN mission in Kosovo for preparing to hand over powers to a EU
mission that Moscow says is illegal.
(Reuters, 6/12/08)
2008 Jun 13, Russian officials
said four people were killed in Nazran, the biggest city in the
Ingushetia region, in an explosion that destroyed a building.
(Reuters, 6/13/08)
2008 Jun 22, A Russian film
about a teenager surprised by the sudden appearance of the fa-ther
she thought to be dead won the top prize at the 11th Shanghai
International Film Festival. Vladimir Kott's directorial debut
"Mukha" was named best feature film in the Jin Jue Awards an-nounced
at the conclusion of the nine-day festival.
(AP, 6/23/08)
2008 Jun 27, EU and Russian
leaders, meeting in Siberia, agreed to launch formal negotia-tions
on a new strategic agreement governing relations. A first round of
negotiations will be held in Brussels on July 4.
(Reuters, 6/27/08)
2008 Jun 28, Police in Russia’s
Dagestan province killed three suspected militants, including a
woman.
(AP, 6/29/08)
2008 Jun, Andrey Melnichenko
(36), founder of MDM Bank, took delivery of his new yacht de-signed
by Philippe Starck. The Russian billionaire’s fortune was estimated
at over $4 billion.
(WSJ, 7/17/08, p.A1)
2008 Jul 8, In Russia’s
Caucasus region the Interior Ministry of Kabardino-Balkaria province
said unidentified gunmen had riddled the police car with bullets in
the village of Baksan. 3 police officers were killed.
(AP, 7/8/08)
2008 Jul 10, The Interfax news
agency, citing a source in Russia's secret services, reported that
the head of the embassy's trade and investment section, Christopher
Bowers, was believed to be a senior British intelligence officer.
(AP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 11, The Czech
Republic’s Industry and Trade Ministry announced that Russia has
reduced its oil shipments to the country without providing an
explanation. The cutback was an-nounced three days after the nation
signed a military agreement with Washington that the Kremlin
strongly opposes.
(AP, 7/11/08)
2008 Jul 11, Zimbabwe’s
opposition Movement for Democratic Change said a total of 113 MDC
supporters have now been killed in politically-related violence.
Zimbabwe's ruling party and opposition held a second day of talks in
South Africa. A UN Security Council bid to pass sanctions against
Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe was vetoed by Russia and China.
(AP, 7/11/08)(AFP, 7/11/08)(AFP, 7/12/08)
2008 Jul 14, Russia agreed to
write off $242 million in Tajikistan debt and take control of the
Okno mountaintop station, operational since 2004. It was designed to
track satellites and even fragments of space debris.
(AP, 7/15/08)
2008 Jul 17, A survey team
member said a Russian government audit has revealed that up to
50,000 pieces are missing from the country’s museums, everything
from Pre-Revolutionary medals and weapons to precious works of art.
(AP, 7/18/08)
2008 Jul 21, China and Russia
signed an agreement that demarcated their 2,700 mile border ending a
long running border dispute.
(WSJ, 7/22/08, p.A1)
2008 Jul 29, Russian news said
2 small, manned submarines reached the bottom of Lake Baikal, the
world's deepest freshwater lake. The "Mir-1" and "Mir-2"
submersibles descended 1.05 miles (1,680 meters) to the bottom of
the vast Siberian lake.
(AP, 7/29/08)
2008 Jul 29, Russian proxies in
South Ossetia started shelling pro-Georgian villages there.
(Econ, 1/23/10, p.78)
2008 Jul 30, Alexander
Tsygankov, a Russian oil executive detained in Libya since last
No-vember, was freed, hours before Russian PM Vladimir Putin was due
to host the country's prime minister.
(Reuters, 7/31/08)
2008 Jul 31, Russia’s
Pres. Medvedev said that he had signed an anticorruption plan and
that he was serious about clamping down on graft.
(WSJ, 7/31/08, p.A6)
2008 Aug 1, Leonid Nevzlin, a
top manager of the now defunct YUKOS business empire, was sentenced
by a Russian court to life in prison for ordering a series of high
profile murders, a verdict he dismissed as the result of a show
trial organized by the Kremlin.
(Reuters, 8/1/08)
2008 Aug 3, The breakaway
republic of South Ossetia began sending hundreds of children across
the border to its Russian ally amid increasing violence between the
republic and Geor-gian government forces.
(AP, 8/3/08)
2008 Aug 3, Alexander
Solzhenitsyn (b.1918), Russian Nobel literature laureate (1970),
died of heart failure in his Moscow home. His books, which included
“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” (1962) and "Gulag
Archipelago" (1973), chronicled the horrors of dictator Josef
Stalin's slave labor camps. In 1974, he was stripped of his
citizenship and put on a plane to West Germany for refusing to keep
silent about his country's past.
(Reuters, 8/4/08)(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W12)
2008 Aug 3, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez says 24 Sukhoi fighter jets have been
deliv-ered to Venezuela, and are ready to defend his country from
"imperialist" aggressions.
(AP, 8/4/08)
2008 Aug 7, A device exploded
on a beach in Sochi, a Black Sea Russian resort that will host the
2014 Winter Olympics, killing two people and wounding three.
(AP, 8/7/08)
2008 Aug 7, Heavy shelling
overnight in the Georgian breakaway province of South Ossetia
wounded at least 21 people. Cyber attacks from Russia began to
target Georgian government Web sites. An organization known as the
Russian Business Network was the leading suspect in the attacks.
Georgia’s Pres. Saakashvili ordered the shelling of Tskhinvali, the
capital of South Ossetia.
(AP, 8/7/08)(WSJ, 8/12/08, p.A9)(Econ, 8/30/08,
p.49)
2008 Aug 8, Georgian troops
launched a major military offensive to regain control of South
Ossetia, prompting a furious response from Russia, which sent tanks
into the region. The con-voy was expected to reach the provincial
capital by evening. Georgia said it shot down two Russian combat
planes. Separatist officials in South Ossetia said 15 civilians had
been killed in fighting overnight. Georgia later acknowledged that
it used M85 cluster munition near the Roki tunnel that connects
South Ossetia with Russia, while Russia denied use of cluster bombs.
(AP, 8/8/08)(AP, 9/1/08)
2008 Aug 9, Russia sent
hundreds of tanks and troops into the separatist province of South
Ossetia and bombed Georgian towns in a major escalation of the
conflict that has left scores of civilians dead and wounded. Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that some
1,500 people have been killed, with the death toll rising. The death
toll in South Os-setia was later put at fewer than 200. Russian
military aircraft bombed the Georgian town of Gori. Georgia's
President Mikhail Saakashvili proposed a cease-fire. As part of his
proposal, Georgian troops were pulled out of Tskhinvali and had been
ordered to stop responding to Rus-sian shelling.
(AP, 8/9/08)(Econ, 8/30/08, p.49)
2008 Aug 10, Georgian troops
retreated from the breakaway province of South Ossetia and their
government pressed for a truce, overwhelmed by Russian firepower as
the conflict threat-ened to set off a wider war. Georgia said it has
shot down 10 Russian planes, including four brought down Aug 9. It
also claimed to have captured two Russian pilots, who were shown on
Georgian television. Ukraine warned Russia it could bar Russian navy
ships from returning to their base in the Crimea because of their
deployment to Georgia's coast.
(AP, 8/10/08)
2008 Aug 11, Swarms of Russian
jets launched new raids on Georgian territory and Georgia faced the
threat of a second front of fighting as Russia demanded that Georgia
disarm troops near the breakaway province of Abkhazia.
(AP, 8/11/08)
2008 Aug 12, Georgia's Pres.
Mikhail Saakashvili said his government will declare that its
breakaway regions are occupied territories and will designate
Russian peacekeepers as occu-pying forces. Russia ordered a halt to
military action in Georgia, after five days of air and land attacks
sent Georgia's army into headlong retreat and left towns and
military bases destroyed. A Dutch television journalist was killed
overnight when Russian warplanes bombed the central Georgian city of
Gori. Russia later counted 133 civilian deaths in South Ossetia.
Rights activists later said fewer than 100 civilians were killed in
South Ossetia. The war cost some 850 lives and left over 35,000
displaced civilians, mot of the Georgian.
(AP, 8/12/08)(Econ, 8/23/08, p.43)(WSJ, 9/12/08,
p.A1)(Econ, 10/3/09, p.65)
2008 Aug 13, Russian tanks
rolled into the crossroads city of Gori then thrust deep into
Geor-gian territory, violating the truce designed to end the six-day
war. Georgia said that 175 Georgi-ans had died in five days of air
and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins. EU for-eign
ministers agreed in principle to send monitors to supervise a
French-brokered ceasefire between Russia and Georgia in the
breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia. Finance Min-ister Alexei
Kudrin said Russia will spend at least $400 million in 2008 on
restoring South Os-setia's battered capital Tskhinvali.
(AP, 8/13/08)(Reuters, 8/13/08)
2008 Aug 14, Georgian and
Russian troops faced off at a checkpoint outside the key city of
Gori, calling an already shaky cease-fire into question. An American
official said Russia ap-pears to be sabotaging airfields and other
military infrastructure as its forces pull back. The Russian General
Prosecutor's office said it has formally opened a genocide probe
into Geor-gian treatment of South Ossetians. For its part, Georgia
this week filed a suit against Russia in the International Court of
Justice, alleging murder, rape and mass expulsions in both
provinces.
(AP, 8/14/08)
2008 Aug 15, Russian troops
allowed some humanitarian supplies into Georgia’s city of Gori but
kept up their blockade of the strategically located city, raising
doubts about Russia's inten-tions. Relief planes swooped into
Tbilisi with tons of supplies for the estimated 100,000 people
uprooted by the fighting. An international rights group said it has
evidence that Russian war-planes dropped cluster bombs in civilian
areas in Georgia.
(AP, 8/15/08)
2008 Aug 16, Russian forces
pulled back from the center of a town not far from Georgia's capital
after Russia's president signed a cease-fire deal. Russia’s Foreign
Minister Sergey Lav-rov later suggested there would be no immediate
broader withdrawal. Georgia's Foreign Minis-try said Saturday that
Russian-backed separatists from the province of Abkhazia had taken
over 13 villages in Georgia and a power plant. Russian troops blew
up a key railroad bridge linking the Caucasus to the Black Sea
coast.
(AP, 8/16/08)(SSFC, 8/17/08, p.A4)
2008 Aug 17, The Kremlin
promised to start withdrawing combat troops from Georgia on Au-gust
18, as Western pressure mounted on Russia to quit the ex-Soviet
republic.
(AFP, 8/17/08)
2008 Aug 18, Russia said its
military began to withdraw from the conflict zone in Georgia, but
left unclear exactly where troops and tanks will operate under the
cease-fire that ended days of fighting in the former Soviet
republic.
(AP, 8/18/08)
2008 Aug 19, Russian soldiers
took 20 Georgian troops prisoner at a key port in western Georgia
and commandeered American Humvees awaiting shipment back to the
United States after taking part in earlier US-Georgian military
exercises. Georgia and Russia exchanged pris-oners captured during
their brief war.
(AP, 8/19/08)
2008 Aug 20, A top Russian
general said 64 of the country's soldiers were killed and 323
wounded in this month's fighting with Georgia. Russia informed
Norway that it plans to suspend all military ties with NATO, a day
after the military alliance urged Moscow to withdraw its forces from
Georgia. Georgia later reported that 170 of its soldiers were killed
in the war.
(AP, 8/20/08)(AP, 8/21/08)(SSFC, 8/24/08, p.A10)
2008 Aug 21, Russian forces
blocked the only land entrance to Georgia's main port city, a day
before Russia promised to complete a troop pullout from its
ex-Soviet neighbor.
(AP, 8/21/08)
2008 Aug 22, A Russian armored
column moved away from a base in western Georgia and Russian forces
also were leaving the key central city of Gori, the day that
Russia's president had said a pullback would be complete.
(AP, 8/22/08)
2008 Aug 23, A top Russian
general said his country's forces will keep patrolling the key
Georgian Black Sea port of Poti even though it lies outside the
areas where Russia claims it has the right to station soldiers in
Georgia.
(AP, 8/23/08)
2008 Aug 24, The USS McFaul, a
US Navy warship carrying humanitarian aid, anchored at the Georgian
port of Batumi, sending a strong signal of support to an embattled
ally as Russian forces built up around two separatist regions. In
central Georgia, an oil train exploded and caught fire, sending
plumes of black smoke into the air. A Georgian official said the
train hit a land mine and blamed the explosion on departing Russian
forces.
(AP, 8/24/08)
2008 Aug 24, The Beijing
Olympics, played out against a background of political intrigue and
featuring 16 days of compelling and controversial action, drew to a
spectacular close. China's haul of 51 gold medals was the largest
since the Soviet Union won 55 in Seoul in 1988. The US won 36 gold
medals and Russia came in 3rd with 23. Jamaica ended up with 11
medals includ-ing 6 gold. Cuba took home 24 medals, but only 2 gold.
(AP, 8/24/08)(Econ, 8/30/08, p.38)
2008 Aug 25, Russia's
parliament voted unanimously to urge the president to recognize the
independence of Georgia's two breakaway regions, a move likely to
stoke further tensions be-tween Moscow and the small Caucasus
nation's Western allies. Russian President Dmitry Med-vedev warned
ex-Soviet Moldova against repeating Georgia's mistake of trying to
use force to seize back control of Transdniestria, a pro-Moscow
breakaway region.
(AP, 8/25/08)(Reuters, 8/25/08)
2008 Aug 26, Russia formally
recognized Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the breakaway Geor-gian
territories at the heart of its war with Georgia, heightening
tensions with the West as the US dispatched a military ship bearing
aid to a port city still patrolled by Russian troops. In a di-rect
challenge to Russia, the US announced it intends to deliver
humanitarian aid to the belea-guered Georgian port city of Poti,
which Russian troops still control through checkpoints on the city's
outskirts.
(AP, 8/26/08)
2008 Aug 27, A US military ship
docked at the southern Georgian port of Batumi. Meanwhile, Russia's
missile cruiser, the Aurora, and two missile boats, anchored at the
port of Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia. The moves by both sides
underscored an escalating standoff between Moscow and the West over
this small Caucasus nation devastated by war with Russia.
(AP, 8/27/08)
2008 Aug 27, The Group of Seven
(G7) industrialized democracies condemned Russia for its actions in
Georgia, underlining the country's growing estrangement from the
West.
(AP, 8/28/08)
2008 Aug 28, A Russian military
spokesman said Russia successfully tested a long-range Topol
missile, designed to avoid detection by anti-missile defense
systems, from its Plesetsk launch site. The RS-12M Topol, called the
SS-25 Sickle by NATO, has a maximum range of 10,000 km (6,125 miles)
and can carry one 550-kiloton warhead.
(AP, 8/28/08)
2008 Aug 28, Russian forces
turned over 12 Georgian soldiers on the border of Abkhazia.
Georgia's foreign minister said ethnic Georgians were being cleared
from their homes in South Ossetia. A joint declaration from the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization denounced the use of force and
called for respect for every country's territorial integrity.
Mikhail Mindzayev, the inte-rior minister of South Ossetia, said an
unmanned Georgian spy plane was shot down over South Ossetia by
local forces.
(AP, 8/28/08)
2008 Aug 28, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin said 19 US poultry producers will be barred from
exporting their products to Russia. He said the unnamed American
producers had ignored warnings from Russian inspectors who examined
poultry companies last year and that another 29 producers would
receive warnings.
(AP, 8/29/08)
2008 Aug 29, A Georgian Foreign
Ministry official says Georgia is to recall all diplomatic staff
from its embassy in Moscow because of the Russian military presence
in Georgia.
(AP, 8/29/08)
2008 Aug 30, The UN says
Russian soldiers are telling thousands of refugees in Georgia who
want to return to their homes that their security can't be
guaranteed. All hoped to return to vil-lages that are in the
"security zones" that Russia has claimed for itself. Russian PM
Vladimir Putin urged the EU to ignore calls to punish Moscow over
the Georgia conflict as Tbilisi ap-pealed for targeted punishment of
the Russian leadership.
(AP, 8/30/08)(AFP, 8/30/08)
2008 Aug 31, President Dmitry
Medvedev says Russia will follow the recognition of Georgia's
breakaway provinces with agreements on economic and military aid.
(AP, 8/31/08)
2008 Aug 31, Police arrested
Magomed Yevloyev, the owner of the Ingushetiya.ru web site, taking
him off a plane that had just landed in Ingushetia province. Police
whisked Yevloyev away in a car and later dumped him on the road with
a gunshot wound in the head. Yevloyev died in a hospital shortly
afterward.
(AP, 8/31/08)
2008 Sep 2, Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin said that Russia will respond calmly to an increase
in NATO ships in the Black Sea in the aftermath of the short war
with Georgia, but promised that "there will be an answer."
(AP, 9/2/08)
2008 Sep 2, In Russia's
troubled North Caucasus journalist Telman Alishaev was shot in
Dagestan. Islamic TV reporter Telman Alishaev died at a hospital in
Makhachkala the next day. Journalist Miloslav Bitokov was left with
a fractured skull after a beating in Nalchik, Kabardino-Balkariya.
Police and co-workers said the two men were likely targeted for
their work.
(AP, 9/3/08)
2008 Sep 4, In Moscow officials
said BP PLC and its billionaire Russian partners in the joint
venture TNK-BP have agreed on a deal that forces out its embattled
CEO and signals an end to a bitter struggle for control of the
Russian-British company.
(AP, 9/4/08)
2008 Sep 4, Russian troops
killed 5 suspected Muslim rebels in Dagestan.
(WSJ, 9/5/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 4, In Georgia US Vice
President Dick Cheney condemned Russia for what he called an
"illegitimate, unilateral attempt" to redraw this US ally's borders
by force.
(AP, 9/4/08)
2008 Sep 5, EU nations called
for an international probe to find out which country should shoulder
responsibility for starting the conflict between Georgia and Russia.
(AP, 9/5/08)
2008 Sep 8, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy pressed Moscow to honor its pledge to with-draw
troops from Georgia, while Russian soldiers prevented international
aid convoys from visit-ing Georgian villages in a tense zone around
the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Pres. Medvedev and Sarkozy
revised the EU-brokered deal to end the fighting between Russia and
Georgia. Medvedev said 200 EU monitors would deploy to regions
surrounding South Ossetia and Abkhazia by next month. After that,
Russian troops would pull out of those regions by Oct. 11 to a line
that preceded last month's fighting.
(AP, 9/8/08)(AP, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 9, Russia said it will
station 7,600 troops in South Ossetia and in Abkhazia, an-nouncing
an imposing long-term presence less than a day after agreeing to
pull forces back from areas surrounding the provinces.
(AP, 9/9/08)(WSJ, 9/10/08, p.A1)
2008 Sep 9, Serbian lawmakers
ratified a pre-membership agreement with the EU and an oil and gas
deal with Russia after months of heated debate over the direction of
the country's poli-cies.
(AP, 9/9/08)
2008 Sep 10, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship blasted off successfully carrying supplies,
equipment and gifts for the international space station.
(AP, 9/10/08)
2008 Sep 10, Israeli defense
officials say the government has told all businessmen involved in
military sales to Georgia to immediately cease visits to the former
Soviet republic. The officials said the directive was decided upon
this week because Israel is concerned about damage to its relations
with Russia.
(AP, 9/10/08)
2008 Sep 12, Russia’s Itar-Tass
news reported that Syria’s Tartous port is being renovated to
provide a permanent facility for the Russian navy.
(SFC, 10/3/08, p.A14)
2008 Sep 13, Hundreds of
Russian forces packed up and withdrew from positions in western
Georgia. A Georgian official said Russia had met a deadline for a
partial pullout a month after the war between the two former Soviet
republics. A Georgian policeman at a post near Abkhazia was killed
by gunfire that came from the direction of a position where
Abkhazian and Russian forces have been based. Some 1,200 Russian
servicemen still remained at 19 check-points and other positions, 12
outside South Ossetia and seven outside Abkhazia.
(AP, 9/13/08)
2008 Sep 14, Aeroflot Flight
821, traveling from Moscow to the Ural Mountains city of Perm,
crashed near residential buildings as it was preparing to land,
killing all 88 people aboard, in-cluding 21 foreign nationals. A
Russian investigator said the crash of the Boeing-737-500 was most
likely caused by engine failure.
(AP, 9/14/08)
2008 Sep 16, Georgia’s
government said intercepted mobile phone calls show that Russian
tanks and troops invaded before Georgia unleashed its offensive
against South Ossetia, press-ing its claim that Russia was the
aggressor in the war last month.
(AP, 9/16/08)
2008 Sep 17, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev signed friendship treaties with Georgia's breakaway
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and promised them the backing
of Russia's armed forces.
(AP, 9/17/08)
2008 Sep 18, Russia ordered its
main stock exchanges closed for a second day as President Dmitry
Medvedev unveiled an expanded $120 billion rescue package and called
for pouring 500 billion rubles ($20 billion) into blue-chip shares
in an effort to stabilize them.
(AP, 9/18/08)(WSJ, 9/19/08, p.A8)
2008 Sep 18, Australia’s PM
Kevin Rudd said the west's relations with Russia are at a turning
point after its intervention in Georgia and a pact to sell
Australian uranium to Moscow is in the balance.
(AP, 9/18/08)
2008 Sep 19, Russian stock
exchanges halted trading after stocks shot higher, rebounding off a
two-day closure amid a financial crisis as the government rushed
through emergency meas-ures that included more money for banks and
purchases of shares to stem plunging prices. Trading resumed later
in the day.
(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 22, Georgian forces
shot down a Russian drone near the breakaway province of South
Ossetia.
(AP, 9/23/08)
2008 Sep 24, Ruslan Yamadayev
(46), a former Russian lawmaker and brother of a Chechen warlord,
was assassinated as he was stopped at a traffic light just outside
the British Embassy in Moscow.
(AP,
9/25/08)(www.newstin.com/rel/us/en-010-005544799)
2008 Sep 24, In Nicaragua
Russia's ambassador to Managua said that his country will replace
the Nicaraguan army's aging weaponry.
(AP, 9/25/08)
2008 Sep 25, The Czech
counterintelligence service said Russian spies operating in the
Czech Republic have tried to increase public opposition to a planned
US missile defense facil-ity. Most Czechs oppose the base, according
to recent polls. The Czech Republic's government has approved the
missile defense treaty, but it still requires the approval of the
Czech parlia-ment, where it faces strong opposition.
(AP, 9/25/08)
2008 Sep 25, Pirates seized the
530-foot, Ukrainian cargo vessel, MV Faina, with 21 people aboard
off eastern Somalia. Russia's navy soon sent a warship to Somalia's
coast a day after pirates seized the Ukrainian vessel loaded with 33
tanks, ammunition and 3 Russian crew members. The ITAR-Tass news
agency said the military equipment had been sold to Kenya. It was
later reported that the arms were destined for southern Sudan and
that Kenya’s coopera-tion would be rewarded in the future with cheap
oil. The shipped was released on Feb 5, 2009, following a ransom of
$3.2 million.
(AP, 9/26/08)(SFC, 9/27/08, p.A5)(Econ, 10/4/08,
p.49)(AP, 2/5/09)
2008 Sep 26, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev announced plans to create an upgraded nuclear
deterrence system for Russia by 2020, including a space defense
system and new nu-clear submarines.
(AP, 9/26/08)
2008 Sep 28, President Hugo
Chavez said that Russia will help Venezuela develop nuclear energy,
a move likely to raise US concerns over increasingly close
cooperation between Cara-cas and Moscow.
(AP, 9/29/08)
2008 Sep 29, US warships and
helicopters surrounded a hijacked cargo ship loaded with
Su-dan-bound tanks and other arms to keep the weapons from falling
"into the wrong hands." The shipment of 33 Russian-designed tanks,
rifles and ammunition on the Ukrainian-operated Faina was headed for
Sudan, not Kenya as previously claimed by Kenyan officials. Somali
pirates demanded a $20 million ransom.
(AP, 9/29/08)(SFC, 9/29/08, p.A12)
2008 Sep 29, South Korea said
its state run Korea Gas Corp. signed a memorandum of un-derstanding
with Russia’s Gazprom to import gas from Russia for 30 years
starting in 2015 as part of a $102 billion bilateral gas and
chemical deal.
(WSJ, 9/30/08, p.A9)
2008 Sep 30, Alexander Lebedev,
a Russian billionaire said he is teaming up with former So-viet
President Mikhail Gorbachev to form a new political party that will
challenge the country's recent steps away from democracy.
(AP, 9/30/08)
2008 Oct 1, The Russian Supreme
Court declared the last czar and his murdered family to be victims
of political repression, a decision that helps Russia move toward
closing a chapter in its tortured history.
(AP, 10/1/08)
2008 Oct 3, Russian share
prices dropped sharply despite a nearly $200 billion Kremlin res-cue
plan. Oleg Deripaska, billionaire tycoon, was reported to have given
up his 20% stake in Magna Int’l., a Canadian auto parts maker, to
creditors.
(WSJ, 10/4/08, p.A4)
2008 Oct 3, A car exploded
outside the Russian military's headquarters in South Ossetia,
kill-ing 7 people and wounding 3. The South Ossetian government said
a car, that had been con-fiscated in an ethnic Georgian village
after weapons were found in it, exploded near a building where
leaders of the Russian peacekeeping force were located.
(AP,
10/3/08)(www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,432172,00.html)
2008 Oct 5, A Georgian Interior
Ministry official said Russian troops have begun dismantling
positions in the so-called security zones inside Georgia that they
have occupied since August's brief but intense war.
(AP, 10/5/08)
2008 Oct 6, Israeli PM Ehud
Olmert visited Moscow, aiming to focus on Russian arms sales to
Israel's enemies. By contrast, Russia hoped the meeting will bolster
its image as a Middle East peacemaker.
(AP, 10/6/08)
2008 Oct 7, Iceland
nationalized its second-largest bank under day-old legislation and
negoti-ated a euro4 billion ($5.4 billion) loan from Russia to shore
up the nation's finances amid a full-blown financial crisis.
(AP, 10/7/08)
2008 Oct 8, Russian forces
pulled back from positions outside South Ossetia, bulldozing a camp
at a key checkpoint and withdrawing into the separatist region as EU
monitors and re-lieved Georgian residents looked on.
(AP, 10/8/08)
2008 Oct 11, Russia launched a
ballistic missile from a submarine in a record flight of over 7,100
miles, hitting a target in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for the
first time. Russian TV showed what it said was the Sineva missile
launching from the submarine Tula.
(AP, 10/11/08)
2008 Oct 12, A Soyuz spacecraft
with two Americans and a Russian on board lifted off from Kazakhstan
for the international space station. The Soyuz TMA-13 capsule
carried American computer game millionaire Richard Garriott, US
astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian cosmo-naut Yuri Lonchakov.
(AP, 10/12/08)
2008 Oct 18, At least two
Russian soldiers were killed and 10 others were wounded when re-bels
ambushed a military convoy in the Sunzha region of Ingushetia.
(AP, 10/18/08)
2008 Oct 21, Top US and Russian
military officers held an unannounced meeting in Helsinki in an
effort to maintain dialogue after Moscow's crushing defeat of
American ally Georgia.
(Reuters, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 21, Iran, Russia and
Qatar discussed the formation of an OPEC-style cartel among some of
the largest natural gas producing nations, a prospect that has
unnerved energy-importing nations in Europe and the United States.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 22, Russia's foreign
minister said Moscow wants to negotiate an extension of its lease at
Ukraine's Black Sea port of Sevastopol. The move would keep Russia's
Black Sea Fleet in the port where it has been stationed for
centuries.
(AP, 10/22/08)
2008 Oct 23, Russia, which sent
a warship to Somalia's coast to combat pirates, asked the African
nation for carte blanche to use force in its territorial waters.
(Reuters, 10/23/08)
2008 Oct 23, Rebel attacks
using land mines in Chechnya killed one Russian soldier and wounded
10 other servicemen and police.
(AP, 10/24/08)
2008 Oct 23, The Ukrainian
currency plunged against the dollar as people raced to exchange
booths to convert their savings into US currency. Ukraine's Foreign
Ministry said in a statement that the Russia’s desire to extend its
port lease at Sevastopol "cannot be a subject of discus-sion." It
said that Russian ships will have to leave Ukrainian waters in 2017.
(AP, 10/23/08)
2008 Oct 24, A Soyuz capsule
carrying an American and two Russians touched down on tar-get in
Kazakhstan after a descent from the international space station,
safely delivering the first two men to follow their fathers into
space.
(AP, 10/24/08)
2008 Oct 25, Muslim Magomayev
(66), an Azeri-born Soviet-era opera and pop singer, died in Moscow.
His fame was at its peak in the 1960s and 70s.
(AP, 10/25/08)
2008 Oct 28, A Moscow jury said
Alexei Frenkel (36), former chairman of VIP Bank, ordered the
September, 2006, murder of Andrei Kozlov (41), a Central Bank
official. 3 Ukrainians were found guilty of the killing. A 4th
Ukrainian and 2 people from Moscow were found guilty as ac-cessories
to the murder.
(WSJ, 10/29/08, p.A14)
2008 Oct 28, The bodies of
Russian Otto Messmer and Victor Betancourt of Ecuador were found in
their Moscow apartment at the Jesuit Moscow headquarters. Several
days later, police announced a 38-year-old man had confessed to the
killings but gave few details. In 2009 a fed-eral Investigative
Committee announced the man had been drinking with Betancourt, and
when Betancourt suggested they have sex, the man bludgeoned
Betancourt with a dumbbell. The man allegedly killed Messmer later
to cover up the first killing.
(AP, 7/17/09)
2008 Oct 29, Russia's
parliament quickly ratified treaties cementing close economic and
mili-tary ties with Georgia's two breakaway provinces.
(AP, 10/29/08)
2008 Oct 29, In Germany
Viswanathan Anand of India retained his world chess title by
draw-ing with the white pieces against Russian challenger Vladimir
Kramnik.
(AP, 10/30/08)
2008 Oct 30, Murat Zyazikov
(51), the unpopular leader of Russia's violence-plagued republic of
Ingushetia, said he has resigned. Pres. Medvedev named an apparent
unknown, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, to take over as the republic's acting
president.
(AP, 10/30/08)
2008 Oct 31, Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi, starting his first visit to post-Soviet Russia,
planned to discuss opening a Russian naval base in Libya to
counterbalance US interests in the region.
(AP, 10/31/08)
2008 Nov 4, In Moscow
ultranationalists and anti-immigrant activists tossed smoke grenades
and scuffled with riot police on a national holiday celebrating
Russian unity. Youths assaulted a Turkmen diplomat outside his
Moscow consulate and killed an Uzbek in separate attacks.
(AP, 11/5/08)
2008 Nov 4, Human Rights Watch
reported that both Georgia and Russia used cluster bombs during
their brief summer war. Georgia’s bombs, purchased from Israel,
killed at least 3 Geor-gian civilians, including 2 who touched
unexploded bombs and died after the fighting ended. Many of the
bombs were said to have malfunctioned.
(WSJ, 11/4/08, p.A12)
2008 Nov 5, Russia will deploy
missiles near NATO member Poland in response to US missile defense
plans, President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday in his first state
of the nation speech.
(AP, 11/5/08)
2008 Nov 6, An suspected
suicide explosion hit a minibus unloading passengers in
Vladi-kavkaz, the capital of Russia's North Ossetia province,
killing 12 people.
(AP, 11/6/08)(Reuters, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 7, General Motors
Corp. dedicated its first Russian assembly plant, a $300 million,
70,000-car-a-year factory just outside of St. Petersburg.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 8, The fire safety
system on a brand-new Russian nuclear submarine accidentally turned
on as the sub was being tested in the Sea of Japan, spewing
chemicals that suffocated 20 people and sent 21 others to the
hospital. The dead included 17 civilians and 3 seamen. Construction
of the Nerpa, an Akula II class attack submarine, started in 1991
but was sus-pended for years because of a shortage of funding.
Testing on the submarine began last month and it submerged for the
first time last week.
(AP, 11/9/08)
2008 Nov 11, Russia’s central
bank widened its target band for the currency’s rate against the
dollar by about 1% in each direction. Weeks of rigid defense had
fueled a $112 billion decline in reserves. The central bank also
raised interest rate by 1% in an effort to keep money from flow-ing
out of the country.
(WSJ, 11/12/08, p.A8)
2008 Nov 12, Pirates
commandeered the Karagol, a Turkish chemical tanker, off the coast
of Yemen. 14 Turkish personnel were aboard the tanker. The Russian
frigate Neustrashimy and the British frigate Cumberland foiled
pirates who fired automatic weapons toward a Danish ship and twice
tried to seize it in the Gulf of Aden. The Karagol was released on
Jan 12, 2009.
(AP, 11/12/08)(AP, 1/13/09)
2008 Nov 14, Russian lawmakers
gave preliminary approval for extending presidential terms from four
years to six, a move observers say could pave the way for Vladimir
Putin to return to the presidency.
(AP, 11/14/08)
2008 Nov 16, Russian liberals
launched a pro-Kremlin political party promising to defend mid-dle
class values but rivals said it was just a tool for the authorities
to suck support away from genuine opposition groups.
(Reuters, 11/16/08)
2008 Nov 19, Vladimir
Kuznetsov, a former UN diplomat convicted in the US of money
laun-dering and fraud, arrived in Moscow and will serve the last 16
months of his sentence in a Rus-sian prison. Kuznetsov once chaired
the UN's powerful budget oversight committee.
(AP, 11/19/08)
2008 Nov 19, Georgia and Russia
held their first major, mediated talks since their August war.
(WSJ, 11/20/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 20, Boris Fyodorov
(50), Russian economic reformer, died.
(Econ, 11/29/08, p.88)
2008 Nov 21, Vadim Pokrovsky,
Russia's anti-AIDS coordinator, said the number of regis-tered HIV
cases is growing 10 percent a year despite increased government
funding. He said that the actual number of people with HIV was
likely higher than 1 million.
(AP, 11/21/08)
2008 Nov 23, In Georgia gunfire
that broke out as Pres. Saakashvili and Polish Pres. Lech Kaczynski
were traveling near a roadblock at the edge of Georgia-controlled
territory. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said there was no
gunfire from Russian or South Ossetian posi-tions and suggested
Georgia engineered the incident to discredit Russia and South
Ossetia. In Tbilisi Nino Burjanadze, a former ally of Pres.
Saakashvili, founded a new party: the Democratic Movement-United
Georgia.
(AP, 11/24/08)(WSJ, 11/24/08, p.A8)
2008 Nov 25, Russian warships
arrived in Venezuela in a show of strength aimed at the United
States as Moscow seeks to expand its influence in Latin America.
(AP, 11/25/08)
2008 Nov 26, In Venezuela
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to help start a local
nuclear energy program and said Moscow is willing to participate in
a socialist trade bloc in Latin America led by President Hugo
Chavez.
(AP, 11/27/08)
2008 Nov 28, In Cuba Russia's
president Medvedev met with Fidel Castro, discussing Guan-tanamo Bay
and hopes for a multipolar world with Cuba's former leader during a
tour of Latin America aimed at raising Moscow's presence in the
region.
(AP, 11/28/08)
2008 Dec 5, Russian Orthodox
Patriarch Alexy II (79) died. He had presided over a vast
post-Soviet revival of faith but struggled against the influence of
other churches.
(AP, 12/5/08)
2008 Dec 5, India and Russia
signed a civilian nuclear deal that would see Russia build four
nuclear reactors for power-starved India.
(AP, 12/5/08)
2008 Dec 6, In Moscow, Russia,
ultranationalist attacked 2 migrant workers, one of whom es-caped.
On Dec 10 the severed head of Salekh Azizov (20), the other Tajik
migrant worker, was found in a trash bin. A group calling itself the
Militant Organization of Russian Nationalists claimed
responsibility. For the year some 85 people were reported killed by
violent nationalists.
(SSFC, 12/14/08, p.A25)
2008 Dec 11, In northern Russia
an explosion and fire ripped through a mine, killing 12 work-ers.
(AP, 12/12/08)
2008 Dec 13, In Russia former
chess champion Garry Kasparov and other prominent liberals launched
a new anti-Kremlin movement.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 13, Russian troops
retook Perevi village near the breakaway region of South Os-setia
just hours after withdrawing. The move drew criticism from Georgia,
the EU and US Sena-tor John Kerry, who was on a half-day visit to
Tbilisi.
(AP, 12/13/08)
2008 Dec 14, In Russia police
thwarted an anti-Kremlin protest organized by Garry Kas-parov's
opposition group, seizing demonstrators and shoving them into
trucks. They detained at least 25 people including the group's
co-leader.
(AP, 12/14/08)
2008 Dec 15, A Moscow court
sentenced seven young Russian men to prison for murdering 19 people
in a string of hate attacks. 2 leaders of a skinhead group, also
convicted of 12 at-tempted murders, received 10-year prison
sentences.
(AP, 12/15/08)
2008 Dec 16, In Israel a bus
filled with Russian tourists plunged into a desert ravine near the
Red Sea resort town of Eilat, killing at least 26 people.
(AP, 12/16/08)(SFC, 12/17/08, p.A8)
2008 Dec 17, The Russian ruble
suffered its largest drop in three months after the Central Bank
signaled it would accelerate the devaluation of the national
currency.
(AP, 12/17/08)
2008 Dec 19, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin said that new tariffs were designed to prop up
de-mand for Russian-made cars and secure jobs in the ailing Russian
auto industry. The tariff hike would send prices for used
foreign-made cars up 50 percent, while prices for new foreign-made
cars could jump up to 15 percent.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Dec 19, In Nigeria's Niger
Delta gunmen in speedboats attacked three oil services ships and
kidnapped at least two Russians in separate incidents. The pair
escaped on foot from a militant camp on Feb 15 and were found by
naval personnel on patrol on Feb 19.
(AP, 12/20/08)(AP, 2/19/09)
2008 Dec 20, Some 500 motorists
rallied in Russia's far east to protest the government's de-cision
to raise car import tariffs. Thousands of others were expected to
stage similar demon-strations across Russia on Dec 21.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Dec 20, In Russia Olga
Lepeshinskaya (b.1916), a Soviet-era prima ballerina who danced with
the Bolshoi Ballet for decades, died.
(AP, 12/20/08)
2008 Dec 21, In far east Russia
riot police in Vladivostok clubbed, kicked and detained doz-ens of
people as hundreds across the country protested an increase in car
import tariffs.
(AP, 12/21/08)(WSJ, 12/22/08, p.A1)
2008 Dec 21, Iran reported that
Russia has begun delivering S-300 air defense systems, which could
help repel any Israeli and US air strikes on its nuclear sites.
(AP, 12/21/08)
2008 Dec 22, The ruble dropped
further as the Central Bank again eased its support of the Russian
currency, under constant pressure from plunging oil prices and
economic woes.
(AP, 12/22/08)
2008 Dec 22, OSCE talks on the
Georgia collapsed, when Russia demanded the group join Moscow in
recognizing the statehood of the provinces of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia. The mission will expire on Dec 31.
(AP, 12/23/08)
2008 Dec 22, In Egypt 7 Russian
tourists died when their bus flipped over along the winding mountain
roads north of the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik.
(AFP, 12/23/08)
2008 Dec 23, Russia's PM
Vladimir Putin said that the world financial crisis and rising costs
mean the price of natural gas is going to rise.
(AP, 12/23/08)
2008 Dec 24, Russian energy
giant Gazprom threatened to cut gas deliveries to Ukraine on January
1 if a new contract is not signed by then for 2009 but pledged to
honor its supply obli-gations to Europe.
(AFP, 12/24/08)
2008 Dec 26, Russia's ruble
fell to a three-year low against the dollar after the Central Bank
allowed a third sharp drop in the currency in five days as the
government continues to feel the heat of the global meltdown.
(AP, 12/26/08)
2008 Dec 29, Top brass from the
Chinese and Russian armies hailed closer ties in their first-ever
conversation over a newly installed military hot line.
(AP, 12/29/08)
2008 Dec 30, The Kremlin said
President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a law extending presi-dential
terms from four years to six, a move seen as paving the way for
Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency.
(AP, 12/30/08)
2008 Dec 30, Russia's natural
gas company Gazprom said it will stop energy shipments to Ukraine
and sharply raise the price for future deliveries if it doesn't pay
a $2 billion debt by New Year's Eve. The Ukrainian government issued
a decree saying two state banks would lend state energy company
Naftogaz Ukrainy up to $2 billion to pay its arrears to Russia’s
Gazprom. Dis-agreements remained on future gas costs.
(AP, 12/30/08)(WSJ, 12/31/08, p.A5)
2008 Dec, Moscow agreed to
provide Lebanon with 10 MiG-29 fighter jets. A few days later
Washington promised to deliver tanks to Beirut.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2008 Dec, Russia’s Finance
Leasing Co. (FLC), a subsidiary of United Aircraft Corp., de-faulted
on $250 million of bonds, the first default by a state-owned company
on foreign debt since the country’s 1998 financial meltdown.
(WSJ, 3/23/09, p.A1)
2008 Dec, Serbia sold its state
oil monopoly NIS to Russia’s Gazprom at a discount. Officials
expected the payoff would be a steady fuel supply. In January gas
supplies to Serbia stopped as Russia halted deliveries via Ukraine.
(SFC, 1/12/09, p.A6)
2008 Jonathan Brent authored
“Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia.”
(WSJ, 12/2/08, p.A17)
2008 Marshall Goldman authored
“Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia.”
(WSJ, 6/19/08, p.A13)
2008 Steve LeVine authored
“Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New
Russia.”
(Econ, 7/19/08, p.92)
2008 Edward Lucas authored “The
New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West.”
(WSJ, 2/26/08, p.D6)
2008 Lewis H. Siegelbaum
authored “Cars for Comrades: The Life of the Soviet Automobile.”
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.94)
2008 The US signed weapons
agreements this year valued a $37.8 billion, or 68.4% of all
business in the global arms bazaar, up from $25.4 billion in 2007.
Italy was 2nd with $3.7 billion and Russia 3rd with $3.5 billion.
(SFC, 9/7/09, p.A3)
2008 BP bypassed its private
Russian partners and negotiated a deal with Gazprom, Russia’s state
controlled gas company.
(Econ, 2/5/11, p.73)
2009 Jan 1, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev signed a bell ending jury trials in cases involving
trea-son, terror, armed revolt and sabotage. Instead, defendants
will have to face three judges.
(WSJ, 1/2/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 1, Russia cut off the
gas to Ukraine after a contract dispute but increased supplies to
other European states to try to reassure customers worried about
possible disruption.
(Reuters, 1/1/09)
2009 Jan 2, Ukraine sought
support in European capitals a day after Russia cut off gas
sup-plies and hardened its stance on prices. The cutoff came after
Ukraine made a $1.5 billion overdue payment, but Russia demanded
another $600 million, including $450 million penalties for the late
payment for gas shipped in November and December. The two sides also
have not agreed on prices for 2009. Russia accused Ukraine of
stealing gas destined for the rest of Europe.
(AP, 1/2/09)(Reuters, 1/2/09)
2009 Jan 3, Russian gas flows
to four European Union countries fell normal levels after Mos-cow
cut off supplies to Ukraine in a pricing row with no talks in sight
to resolve the dispute. Bul-garia's Bulgargaz joined energy firms in
Poland, Romania and Hungary in saying they had noted falls in
supply.
(Reuters, 1/3/09)
2009 Jan 4, Russia's military
leaders approved a plan by the navy to station warships perma-nently
in friendly ports across the globe.
(AP, 1/4/09)
2009 Jan 4, Russia asked the EU
to provide monitoring of Ukraine's gas transit system and charged
Ukraine was stealing gas bound for Europe, as Kiev leveled its own
charges. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said that the state-controlled
company wanted $450 per 1,000 cubic meters, up from its last offer
of $418. The reductions in gas supplies spread to the Czech Republic
and Turkey.
(AP, 1/4/09)(Reuters, 1/4/09)
2009 Jan 6, A natural gas
crisis loomed over Europe, as a contract dispute between Russia and
Ukraine shut off Russian gas supplies to six countries and reduced
gas deliveries to sev-eral others. Bulgaria, Greece, Macedonia,
Romania, Croatia and Turkey all reported a halt in gas shipments.
(AP, 1/6/09)
2009 Jan 7, The EU said Russia
and Ukraine will accept using international monitors to verify the
transit of natural gas from Russia through Ukraine's pipelines.
Russia's gas giant Gazprom completely stopped sending gas to
European consumers at 7:44 a.m. (0544 GMT). 80% of Russian gas
shipped via Ukraine.
(AP, 1/7/09)
2009 Jan 8, Russia's
state-controlled gas monopoly said it would restore supplies to
Europe through Ukraine, cut off after a dispute between Moscow and
Kiev, as soon as international monitors are in place.
(Reuters, 1/8/09)
2009 Jan 9, A Russian
helicopter owned by the state gas giant Gazprom crashed while on a
hunting trip in the mountains of Western Siberia, killing eight
aboard. 3 people survived. The crash involved government officials
on an illegal hunt.
(AP, 1/11/09)(WSJ, 4/28/09, p.A8)
2009 Jan 10, Russia and the EU
took a step toward securing the resumption of gas flows to Europe
when the two signed a deal on monitoring the supplies through
Ukraine. PM Vladimir Putin said Russia will restart gas supplies to
Europe once an EU-led monitoring mission begins to track gas transit
via Ukraine.
(AP, 1/10/09)(Reuters, 1/10/09)
2009 Jan 11, Russia, Ukraine,
and the EU struck an agreement to try to resume Russian supplies
through Ukraine to Europe. President Dmitry Medvedev said energy
giant Gazprom would only resume gas supplies once Russia had a copy
of the document signed by Ukraine and once the various teams of
international observers were in place. The text of the accord calls
for the EU, Russia and Ukraine to each provide 25 experts to "carry
out checks on the ba-sis of equal parity both on Ukrainian and
Russian territory.
(Reuters, 1/11/09)(AFP, 1/11/09)
2009 Jan 12, Russia's state-run
monopoly Gazprom announced it will resume shipping natural gas to
Europe, where tens of thousands of homes and buildings have been
left without heat in freezing weather.
(AP, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 13, Russia and Ukraine
hotly blamed each other as Russia restarted natural gas supplies but
little or no gas flowed toward Europe. EU officials watched in
dismay and criticized both nations for their intransigence.
(AP, 1/13/09)
2009 Jan 13, A Russian warship
helped foil an attack on a Dutch container ship by suspected Somali
pirates in the dangerous Gulf of Aden.
(AP, 1/14/09)
2009 Jan 13, In Austria Umar
Israilov (27), a Chechen refugee, was shot dead on a Vienna street.
Officials said they had no proof the killing was political, but
human rights activists said his death was linked to his opposition
to Chechnya's pro-Moscow president. On Jan 28 Austrian authorities
arrested seven suspects, all Chechens, in the killing. On February
19 Polish police arrested Turpal Ali J. (31), a man suspected of
killing Israilov. In 2010 Austrian investigators concluded that
Chechnya Pres. Ramzan Kadyrov ordered the kidnapping of one of his
critics and former bodyguards and that Israilov was shot to death
when the abduction went awry. In 2011 an Austrian prosecutor
sought life sentences for three Russian men on charges they car-ried
out the murder of the Israilov.
(AP, 1/28/09)(AP, 2/22/09)(AP, 4/27/10)(AP,
6/1/11)
2009 Jan 14, Russia and Ukraine
wrangled over gas supplies again. Bulgaria and Slovakia, cut off by
the row for a freezing week, launched missions to plead for Russian
gas flow to be restored.
(Reuters, 1/14/09)
2009 Jan 15, Ukraine rejected
Russia's latest request to pipe natural gas westward to
in-creasingly frustrated EU consumers, deepening the bitter economic
and political dispute that has paralyzed energy shipments to Europe.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Jan 15, The US dollar
strengthened against the ruble to a record 32.40 rubles, well above
the high set in 2003. The depreciation was expected to continue.
(WSJ, 1/16/09, p.C8)
2009 Jan 17, Russia and Ukraine
held gas crisis talks in Moscow that the European Union said were
the "last and best chance" to resolve the row that has left Europe
struggling without key gas supplies.
(AFP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 18, Russia and Ukraine
announced a deal to end the bitter dispute that has blocked Russian
natural gas from Europe following talks between Russian PM Vladimir
Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Yulia Tymoshenko. Under the
terms, Ukraine will pay 20 percent less than the European "market
price" price for gas this year, which Russia says is $450 per 1,000
cubic meters. That's more than twice as much as the $179.50 Ukraine
paid in 2008.
(AP, 1/18/09)
2009 Jan 18, Kyrgyzstan began
to come under a massive cyber attack attributed to Russian
“cyber-militia.” Less than 20% of the country’s 5.3 million
population had online access. Pro-posed reasons for the attacks
included the US use of an air base for operations in Afghanistan or
a hit on the fledgling Kyrgyz opposition, which has used the
Internet to express its discontent.
(WSJ, 1/28/09, p.A10)
2009 Jan 19, Russia released a
text by President Dmitry Medvedev ordering the government to
introduce economic sanctions against countries supplying weapons to
Georgia.
(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 19, Russia and Ukraine
signed a deal that restores natural gas shipments to Ukraine and
paves the way for an end to the nearly two-week cutoff of most
Russian gas to a freezing Europe.
(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 19, In Russia a girl
disappeared after leaving her home in St. Petersburg for school.
Vity prosecutor's spokesman later Sergei Kapitonov she was killed
that night, and that body parts believed to be hers were found in
plastic bags scattered around the city. Yuri Mozhnov (19), a
florist, and Maxim Golovatskikh (19), a street-market butcher, were
arrested on Jan 31 on suspicion of killing her and eating parts of
her body.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Jan 19, In Russia
Stanislav Markelov (34), a human-rights lawyer who unsuccessfully
fought the early release of a Russian colonel convicted of murdering
a Chechen woman, was shot dead on a Moscow street along with
reporter Anastasia Baburova (b.1983). Markelov had told reporters he
was considering file an international court appeal against the early
release of Col. Yuri Budanov, who was convicted in 2003 and
sentenced to 10 years, including time served, for strangling
18-year-old Heda Kungayeva in 2000. He admitted to killing her,
saying he believed she was a Chechen insurgent sniper. Budanov was
freed last week with more than a year left on his murder sentence.
On Nov 4 Nikita Tikhonov and a female comrade were de-tained for the
murder and Tikhonov confessed to the crime. On May 6, 2011, Tikhonov
was sentenced to life in prison, and his girlfriend received an
18-year sentence.
(AP, 1/19/09)(Econ, 2/7/09, p.79)(AP,
11/6/09)(Econ, 11/14/09, p.63)(AP, 5/6/11)
2009 Jan 19, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai's office said that Russia is ready to cooperate on
defense matters with Afghanistan. The announcement coincided with an
increasingly public tussle between Afghan and Western officials.
(AP, 1/19/09)
2009 Jan 20, Russian gas
reached Europe via Ukraine for the first time in two weeks after
Moscow and Kiev ended a contract row that cut supplies to about 20
European countries.
(Reuters, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 20, The head of US
Central Command said the US has struck deals with Russia and
neighboring countries allowing it to transport supplies to American
troops in Afghanistan through their territory. US officials have
said that one likely route is overland from Russia through
Kazakhstan and on through Uzbekistan using trucks and trains.
Another possible route is via Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea to
the Kazakh port of Aktau and then through Uzbeki-stan.
(AP, 1/20/09)
2009 Jan 21, Russia's military
said that an old Soviet-built nuclear-powered satellite has spewed
fragments in orbit, but insisted they do not threaten the
international space station or people on Earth.
(AP, 1/21/09)
2009 Jan 22, Russia's Central
Bank said it will widen the ruble's trading range to allow an
ef-fective 10 percent devaluation of the national currency.
(AP, 1/22/09)
2009 Jan 27, Russian Orthodox
bishops, monks and laymen voted for a new head for the world's
second largest Christian church in a contest between a powerful
modernizer and an in-fluential conservative. Metropolitan Kirill
(62) defeated a conservative rival, Metropolitan Kli-ment, with 508
of 700 votes.
(AP, 1/27/09)(SFC, 2/2/09, p.A3)
2009 Jan 27, Japan’s No. 38
Yoshi Maru fishing boat was seized by Russian authorities in waters
between the two countries and was taken to the Russian port of
Nakhodka. On Feb 7 Russian authorities released all 10 Japanese crew
members seized after allegedly straying into Russian waters.
(AFP, 1/28/09)(AP, 2/7/09)
2009 Jan 28, Russia’s military
said it has halted plans to deploy missiles near the Polish bor-der,
in what could be a sign Moscow is seeking better ties with the new
US president.
(Reuters, 1/28/09)
2009 Jan 28, Cuba’s President
Raul Castro began the first visit to Russia by a Cuban leader since
the end of the Cold War, the latest sign of reviving ties between
the two countries.
(Reuters, 1/28/09)
2009 Jan 28, Japan’s
territorial row with Russia was re-ignited as Japan announced that
it had cancelled humanitarian aid to the four disputed Russian-held
islands, north of Japan's main northern island of Hokkaido,
following new Russian demand that a disembarkation card be submitted
in addition to the usual procedures.
(AP, 1/28/09)
2009 Jan 28, In Switzerland
some 2,500 business and political leaders met at Davos for the World
Economic Forum, as the worst financial crisis since the Great
Depression served to mute the enthusiasm of previous years. China’s
Premier Wen Jiabao and Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin blamed the US-led
financial system for the global economic slump.
(AP, 1/28/09)(WSJ, 1/29/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 30, Russia moved to
rebuild ties with Cold War ally Cuba, granting it loans and sign-ing
deals on energy and industrial cooperation.
(AP, 1/30/09)
2009 Jan 31, Thousands of
protesters rallied across Russia to criticize the government's
eco-nomic course and its response to the global financial crisis. In
Moscow minutes after protesters unfurled anti-Kremlin banners and
chanted "Down with KGB power" and "Russia without Putin," a dozen
young men jumped out of cars and started to beat them with fists and
metal rods. Po-lice ignored the attacks by alleged members of "Young
Russia," a pro-Kremlin youth group.
(AP, 1/31/09)(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 3, A Russian military
Mi-24 helicopter gunship crashed about 700 kilometers (450 miles)
southeast of Moscow, killing all three people aboard.
(AP, 2/3/09)
2009 Feb 3, The Kremlin said
Russia and Belarus will create a new military system to monitor and
defend their air space.
(WSJ, 2/4/09, p.A10)
2009 Feb 3, Kyrgyzstan said it
would end the US lease of an air base that supports military
operations in Afghanistan. Kyrgyzstan President Kurmanbek Bakiyev
announced his intention to shut the base, at least for the moment,
after Russia agreed to provide Kyrgyzstan with $2 billion in loans
plus another $150 million in financial aid. The lease deal obliges
Kyrgyzstan to give the US 180 days notice to clear the base.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Feb 4, Russia sought to
bolster its security alliance with six other ex-Soviet nations
(Ar-menia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan) by forming a joint rapid re-action force in a continuing
effort to curb US influence in energy-rich Central Asia.
(AP, 2/4/09)
2009 Feb 6, Russia granted
transit rights to nonlethal US military supplies headed to
Afghani-stan, but only after pressuring Kyrgyzstan to close an air
base leased to the US.
(SFC, 2/7/09, p.A3)
2009 Feb 7, Russian authorities
released all 10 Japanese crew members seized aboard a fishing boat
in late January after allegedly straying into Russian waters.
(AP, 2/7/09)
2009 Feb 10, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship lifted off from Kazakhstan carrying supplies and
a space suit to the international space station and its three-member
crew. American astro-nauts Michael Fincke and Sandra Magnus are
aboard the station along with Russian Yuri Lon-chakov. The crew size
will be doubled to six members later this year.
(AP, 2/10/09)
2009 Feb 10, The first-ever
collision between two satellites occurred over Siberia when a
derelict Russian military communications satellite, Cosmos 2251,
crossed paths with a US Irid-ium satellite.
(AP, 2/12/09)(Econ, 8/21/10, p.65)
2009 Feb 12, In Russia's
restive southern republic of Ingushetia insurgents and police
clashed, leaving four officers and three attackers dead.
(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 12, Off Somalia an
American helicopter from the USS Vella Gulf fired warning shots at
gunmen in two skiffs that had opened fire and tried to board the
Indian-flagged vessel Prem-divya. US forces searched the skiff and
found weapons including rocket-propelled grenades, then took nine
suspected pirates aboard the American ship. A Russian
nuclear-powered heavy missile cruiser, Peter The Great, detained 10
Somali pirates closing in on an Iranian-flagged fishing trawler. The
men, were caught with rifles, grenade-launchers, illegal narcotics
and a large sum of money.
(AP, 2/13/09)
2009 Feb 14, Irish authorities
learned about an oil spill through surveillance carried out by the
European Maritime Safety Agency in Lisbon, Portugal. Irish military
aircraft flew over the area and saw the Russian aircraft carrier
Admiral Kuznetsov, a Russian oil tanker, and a Russian oceangoing
tug near the slick. this was the biggest oil spill in the waters
around Ireland in the last ten years.
(AP, 2/17/09)
2009 Feb 15, In southern Russia
a fire ripped through a wooden apartment building, killing 16 people
in Molodyozhny, a village in the Astrakhan region.
(AP, 2/15/09)
2009 Feb 15, Shots from a
Russian naval vessel sank the Chinese-owned cargo ship the New Star
off Russia's east coast. 8 the 16 crew members on board were killed.
The Sierra Leone-flagged, Chinese-owned vessel New Star had earlier
fled the Russian port of Nakhodka where it had been impounded for
alleged smuggling.
(AFP, 2/20/09)
2009 Feb 16, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev replaced four provincial governors for their poor
per-formance amid financial crisis and named new governors for the
western Oryol, Pskov and Vo-ronezh regions and the northern Nenets
region.
(AP, 2/16/09)
2009 Feb 16, Russia Pres.
Medvedev said Bolivia will receive helicopters from Russia to help
fight drugs as well as assistance to develop energy resources.
(AP, 2/16/09)
2009 Feb 17, China and Russia
signed a $25 billion energy deal in Beijing that will see the Asian
country secure oil supplies from Moscow for the next 20 years in
return for loans.
(AP, 2/17/09)
2009 Feb 18, Japanese PM Taro
Aso met Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on an island near disputed
resource-rich maritime territory, hoping to make progress toward
resolving a dis-pute lingering since World war II.
(AP, 2/18/09)
2009 Feb 18, Georgia and Russia
agreed to let monitors visit anywhere they want in Georgia and its 2
breakaway provinces.
(WSJ, 2/19/09, p.A1)
2009 Feb 19, A Moscow court
acquitted three men accused of helping murder Kremlin critic and
journalist Anna Politkovskaya, leaving Russia's most politically
charged killing in years still unsolved. This decision was
overturned in June.
(Reuters, 2/19/09)(AP, 6/25/09)
2009 Feb 21, A few hundred
Russian opposition sympathizers held an anti-Kremlin rally in
central Moscow demanding the resignation of the government. Former
chess champion Garry Kasparov and former Prime Minister Mikhail
Kasyanov addressed the crowd from a truck.
(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Feb 21, In Russia
assailants with automatic rifles blocked a car of 2 bank employees
on a highway in Tula province south of Moscow and stole about 43
million rubles ($1.2 million; euro 940,000) in cash at gunpoint. The
bank employees, a cashier and a driver, were traveling in a Toyota
with no armed escort despite the large amount of cash.
(AP, 2/23/09)
2009 Feb 25, Russian news
agencies quoted Chief Military Prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky as saying
that his office has exposed an attempt by military officers to
smuggle $18 million worth of stolen Russian weapons to China via
Tajikistan.
(AP, 2/25/09)
2009 Feb 25, Russia issued a
DVD and a thick book of historical documents to dispute claims that
the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s amounted to genocide. It was
argued that the Stalin-era famine was a common tragedy across Soviet
farmlands.
(SFC, 2/26/09, p.A2)
2009 Feb 25, Iranian and
Russian technicians conducted a test run of Iran's first nuclear
power plant, a major step toward launching full operations at the
facility.
(AP, 2/25/09)
2009 Mar 1, Russia's ruling
party cemented its grip on elected posts with big victories in local
elections despite an economic crisis, but the opposition complained
of widespread cheating.
(Reuters, 3/2/09)
2009 Mar 3, Igor Panarin, dean
at the Russian Foreign Ministry's school for future diplomats and a
regular on Russia's state-guided TV channels, told dozens of
students, professors and diplomats that: "There is a high
probability that the collapse of the US will occur by 2010." He also
said the US will break up into six autonomous regions and Alaska
will revert to Russian control.
(AP, 3/4/09)
2009 Mar 5, NATO foreign
ministers agreed to resume high-level formal ties with Russia,
suspended last year after Moscow's military thrust into Georgia.
(AP, 3/5/09)
2009 Mar 5, Ukraine’s Naftogaz
paid its February bill for Russian gas just hours after Pres. Putin
said Russia would halt supplies if Ukraine failed to meet a March 7
deadline.
(WSJ, 3/6/09, p.A10)
2009 Mar 13, Russia’s
Kontinental Management said it has closed for good its Baikal Pulp
and Paper Mill, located on the southern edge of Lake Baikal. It
halted production in October. The plant has polluted the world's
largest freshwater lake with chemical effluent for decades.
(AP, 3/13/09)
2009 Mar 14, A Russian Air
Force chief said that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has offered
an island as a temporary base for strategic Russian bombers. Maj.
Gen. Anatoly Zhik-harev also said Cuba could be used to base the
aircraft.
(AP, 3/14/09)
2009 Mar 15, Russia's President
Dmitry Medvedev said that he will publicly declare his in-come and
encouraged other officials to fight corruption by disclosing
relatives' incomes and as-sets.
(AP, 3/15/09)
2009 Mar 15, President Hugo
Chavez dispatched the navy to Venezuela's seaports, warning that
state governors who challenge a new law bringing transportation hubs
under federal control could end up in prison. Chavez also said that
Russian bombers would be welcome in Vene-zuela, but he denied that
his country would offer Moscow its territory for a military base.
(AP, 3/15/09)
2009 Mar 17, Russia's defense
minister charged that the US and NATO were beefing up their military
presence near Russia's borders in a bid for natural resources that
could ignite new con-flicts.
(AP, 3/17/09)
2009 Mar 18, Russian news
agencies cited a top defense official as confirming that a contract
to sell powerful air-defense missiles to Iran was signed two years
ago, but saying no such weapons have yet been delivered.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Russia said it was
banning the hunting of baby harp seals, weeks after PM Putin
reportedly called the hunt a bloody industry.
(SFC, 3/19/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 21, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev replaced Gov. Yuri Yevdomikov of the northwest re-gion of
Murmansk, apparently seeking to ensure that the ruling party
remained in control there after it suffered a surprising defeat in
local elections.
(SSFC, 3/22/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 25, In northwestern
Russia Kirovsk mayor Ilya Kelmanzon was shot dead in his of-fice. A
local utilities chief who was in Kelmanzon's office, then shot
himself dead.
(AP, 3/25/09)
2009 Mar 26, In central Russia
a head-on collision between a bus and a truck in Petushki, about 120
kilometers (75 miles) east of Moscow, killed 14 people.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Kazakhstan a
Soyuz capsule carrying a Russian-American crew and US bil-lionaire
space tourist Charles Simonyi blasted off for the international
space station.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 27, Russian media
reported that the presidential Security Council has released a
document outlining government policy for the Arctic that includes
creating a special group of military forces.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 28, In Dubai Sulim
Yamadayev, a former Chechen rebel, was shot in a brazen at-tack and
died on March 30. He had switched sides to the government during
Chechnya's long-running conflict with Moscow. On April 5 Dubai
authorities said they had arrested two suspects in the slaying. They
said Adam Delimkhanov, a Chechen member of Russia’s lower house and
the Chechen president's right-hand man, had masterminded the
killing. On April 12, 2010, Ma-hdi Tagi Dhurnia of Iran and Tajik
national Mahsoudjan Asmanov were sentenced to 25 years in prison
after being found guilty of aiding and abetting the assassination of
Yamadayev.
(AP, 3/31/09)(SFC, 3/31/09, p.A5)(AP,
4/5/09)(SFC, 4/6/09, p.A3)(AP, 4/12/10)(AP, 12/22/10)
2009 Mar 29, In Russia the film
"Olympius Inferno," was first broadcast on state television. It
offering the Kremlin's version of the August war with Georgia and
contained anti-American overtones, reflecting Russia's anger over US
support for Georgia.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 30, In Russia PM Putin
pledged over $1 billion in state support to its ailing car in-dustry
in a bid to avoid heavy job losses and potential social unrest.
(WSJ, 3/31/09, p.B2)(http://tinyurl.com/csyby9)
2009 Mar 30, In Russia Sergei
Protazanov, a newspaper employee in a Moscow suburb, died one day
after being beaten near his home in the in the town of Khimki.
Protazanov had been compiling an issue that included reports on
alleged falsifications in local mayoral elections.
(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Russia
prominent human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov (67) was beaten
outside his Moscow home by unknown attackers. His daughter, Yelena
Liptser, said she be-lieved Ponomaryov, the head of the All-Russia
Movement for Human Rights, was attacked be-cause of his rights work
and his strident criticism of the Kremlin.
(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Moscow, Russia,
the hatch slammed shut behind six volunteers from Europe and Russia
who will spend three months isolated in a capsule to simulate
conditions for a manned mission to Mars.
(AFP, 3/31/09)
2009 Apr 1, In London
Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama said Russia and the
United States will pursue a new deal to cut nuclear warheads, making
good on a pledge to re-build relations from a post-Cold War low. The
US and China agreed to establish a "strategic and economic dialogue"
group that would first meet in Washington later this year.
(Reuters, 4/1/09)
2009 Apr 8, A Russian
spacecraft carrying a crew of three including US billionaire space
tour-ist Charles Simonyi landed safely in Kazakhstan.
(AP, 4/8/09)
2009 Apr 8, In Turkmenistan a
blast on a Central Asian pipeline halted the supply of Turkmen gas
to Russia. The explosion was later said to have resulted from
Gazprom’s decision to stop importing gas due to high prices and
falling demand. Gazprom blamed the explosion on poor maintenance.
(AP, 4/9/09)(Econ, 12/12/09, p.46)
2009 Apr 10, In Moscow Iraqi PM
Nouri al-Maliki met with Russian President Dmitry Medve-dev and PM
Vladimir Putin. Al-Maliki told Medvedev in the Kremlin that Iraq is
interested in Russian investment, and Putin said at a joint news
conference that talks focused on oil and gas cooperation.
(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Apr 11, In Moscow Iraqi PM
Nouri al-Maliki met with Russian business leaders to en-courage them
to take an active part in rebuilding Iraq's economy.
(AP, 4/11/09)
2009 Apr 13, A Russian court
ruled that tycoon Alexander Lebedev's registration as a candi-date
in the mayoral race in the Olympic city of Sochi is illegitimate.
(AP, 4/13/09)
2009 Apr 16, Russia ordered an
end to its counterterrorism operation in Chechnya, a move that could
lead to the withdrawal of tens of thousands of troops from the
southern republic bat-tered by two separatist wars in the past 15
years.
(AP, 4/16/09)
2009 Apr 17, In Russia the
Sochi Elections Commission decided to strike billionaire and
Rus-sian government critic Alexander Lebedev from the ballot,
after an appeals court a day earlier upheld a ruling that he had
misfiled financial statements when registering his candidacy last
month.
(AP, 4/18/09)
2009 Apr 19, The annual Goldman
Environmental Prize was awarded to 7 activists from 6 na-tions.
Rizwana Hasan (40) of Bangladesh was awarded for exposing
environmental damage and exploitative practices used in the
country’s ship dismantling industry; Marc Ona Essangui (45) of
Gabon, the founder of Brainforest, was awarded for exposing secret
agreements for a Chinese mine project that threatened Gabon’s rain
forests; Yuyun Ismawati of Indonesia was awarded for designing
environmentally safe waste management systems for poor Indonesia n
communities; Olga Speranskaya (46) of Eco-Accord in Russia was
awarded for her efforts to control and store chemicals in Russia and
former Soviet republics; Wanze Eduards (52) and Hugo Jabini (44) of
Suriname, leaders of the maroon community, were awarded for their
efforts that led to a landmark ruling ending tribal exploitation by
the government. Maria Gunnoe (40) of West Virginia was awarded for
her fight against the practice of removing of the tops of moun-tains
and filing valleys below with tailings.
(SSFC, 4/19/09, p.A18)
2009 Apr 20, Vladimir Lukin,
Russia's parliament-appointed human rights ombudsman, pre-sented an
annual report on human rights in Russia that included violations of
religious free-doms, prisoners' rights and freedom of political
expression. He said he is concerned about a growing number of claims
that police and judicial authorities committed abuses.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 23, Russia’s central
bank said it will cut its key lending rates by half a percentage
point and increase reserve requirements.
(WSJ, 4/22/09, p.A10)
2009 Apr 24, In Italy US and
Russian arms negotiators held a "very productive" initial round of
talks aimed at agreeing a new treaty to curb nuclear weapons as part
of a broader effort to im-prove relations.
(AP, 4/24/09)
2009 Apr 26, The Russian city
of Sochi, host for the 2014 Winter Olympics, elected a mayor after a
campaign that a liberal opposition candidate called a fraud and
disgruntled voters said favored the Kremlin-backed front-runner. The
Kremlin favorite won an overwhelming victory in Sochi, but the top
opposition candidate claimed fraud and said he would challenge the
result.
(AP, 4/26/09)(AP, 4/27/09)
2009 Apr 27, A Moscow district
police chief opened fire on the street and in a supermarket, killing
three people and wounding seven others, four of them critically.
Maj. Denis Yevsyukov killed a cab driver and wounded several
passers-by in the street, then gunned down a cashier and a customer
in the market. He then held two dozen people hostage for several
hours and shot at police officers before they disarmed and detained
him. On Feb 19, 2010, a Moscow court sentenced the police precinct
chief to life in prison for the drunken shooting spree.
(AP, 4/27/09)(AP, 2/19/10)
2009 Apr 28, Ekaterina Maximova
(70), legendary Russian ballerina, died. Maximova's danc-ing career
at the Bolshoi spanned three decades, from her debut as Masha in
"The Nutcracker" in 1958 until 1988.
(AP, 4/28/09)
2009 Apr 28, The Russian
destroyer Admiral Panteleyev seized a vessel with 29 suspected
pirates off the coast of Somalia. A Russian tanker fended off an
attack by the same group ear-lier in the day. On May 4 the Russian
warship freed 8 Iranians who were seized along with the suspected
Somali pirates.
(AP, 4/29/09)(AP, 5/4/09)
2009 Apr 29, NATO and Russia
resumed formal contacts eight months after they were sus-pended
because of last year's war with Georgia.
(AP, 4/29/09)
2009 Apr 30, Russia signed a
deal with Georgia's two breakaway regions giving Moscow the power to
guard the borders of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a move sharply
criticized in Tbilisi.
(AP, 4/30/09)
2009 May 3, A gas explosion
tore through a Siberian apartment block and sparked a fire that
engulfed the building, killing eight people, including two children.
(AP, 5/3/09)
2009 May 4, South Korean
snipers hovering in a helicopter chased away pirates pursuing a
North Korean freighter, while the Russian destroyer Admiral
Panteleyev freed eight Iranian citi-zens held hostage for more than
three months.
(AP, 5/4/09)
2009 May 6, Russia said it is
expelling two Moscow-based NATO employees who are Cana-dian
diplomats in retaliation for NATO's recent expulsion of two Russian
envoys from its head-quarters in Belgium.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Russia retired
Gen. Valentin Varennikov (85), a hawkish World War II veteran who
directed the Soviet war in Afghanistan, died. He had joined the
rebellion against Mikhail Gorbachev that sped the collapse of the
Soviet Union.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 7, Russian Mission
Control said the unmanned Progress M-02M lifted off from Ka-zakhstan
on schedule and should dock with the int’l. space station on May 12.
(AP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 12, The US won a seat
on the UN Human Rights Council for the first time along with Cuba,
Saudi Arabia, China and Russia, four countries accused of serious
human rights vio-lations.
(SFC, 5/13/09, p.A2)
2009 May 13, Russian news
agencies reported that Russia, in agreement with the US, will charge
US astronauts $51 million per return trip to the International Space
Station (ISS) from 2012 and will resume selling seats to space
tourists. In 2006 Russia charged the US $21.8 mil-lion per return
flight to the ISS. Since then the price for of a space tourist
ticket to the ISS has climbed to $35 million from $20 million.
(Reuters, 5/13/09)
2009 May 14, Russia said it was
proposing a new version of a key European arms-control treaty it
suspended more than a year ago, and could once again honor the
agreement if the US and its NATO allies accept the changes.
(AP, 5/14/09)
2009 May 16, In Russia riot
police violently broke up several gay rights demonstrations in
Moscow, hauling away scores of protesters hours before the Russian
capital hosted the major Eurovision international pop music
competition.
(AP, 5/16/09)
2009 May 16, Norway’s
fiddle-wielding Alexander Rybak (23), dubbed 'Alexander the Great'
by Norwegian media, won a landslide victory in the Eurovision Song
Contest in Moscow for his song "Fairytale," gaining the most points
in Eurovision's 53-year history.
(AP, 5/17/09)
2009 May 19, Russia announced
it has created a commission to fight what President Dmitry Medvedev
says are efforts to hurt his country by falsifying history, part of
a campaign to pro-mote the Kremlin's views and silence those who
question them.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 19, Russia and the US
held talks in Moscow aimed at cutting stockpiles of nuclear weapons,
a move that could herald a thaw in relations between the former Cold
War foes.
(AP, 5/19/09)
2009 May 22, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev challenged EU leaders meeting at a sum-mit in
Khabarovsk to help Ukraine pay its gas bills in order to prevent
disruption of Russian supplies to Europe.
(Reuters, 5/22/09)
2009 May 26, Russia's uranium
export company signed a groundbreaking $1 billion package of
contracts to supply three US utilities with enriched fuel for
nuclear power plants. Tenex signed contracts to provide enriched
uranium fuel to San Francisco, California-based Pacific Gas &
Electric Company; St. Louis, Missouri-based AmerenUE; and Dallas,
Texas-based Lu-minant. Tenex will supply fuel to the US utilities
from 2014 through 2020 under the contracts, which provide the option
for renewal.
(AP, 5/26/09)
2009 May 27, A Russian space
capsule, carrying Canadian Bob Thirsk, Russian Roman Ro-manenko and
Belgian Frank De Winne, blasted off from Kazakhstan for a 2 day
journey to the ISS.
(SFC, 5/28/09, p.A2)
2009 May 28, Russian PM
Vladimir Putin met Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk
amid talk of massive loans to Minsk, just days after the Belarussian
strongman made a furious attack on his Moscow ally.
(AFP, 5/28/09)
2009 May 29, Russian and
American officials formally dedicated a high-tech plant in southern
Siberia, built with the help of $1 billion from the US and designed
to destroy about 2 million chemical weapons shells.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 Jun 7, Egypt's public
prosecutor ordered the return of a shipment of Russian wheat
im-pounded last month on health grounds. The decision to ship back
the 52,000 tons of wheat, worth 9.6 million dollars (6.8 million
euros), came after an investigation found the grain was contaminated
with insects and unspecified heavy metals.
(AFP, 6/7/09)
2009 Jun 8, Interfax news
agency reported that Russian forces have killed Doku Umarov, the
leader of the Chechen separatist movement.
(Reuters, 6/8/09)
2009 Jun 8, In Britain van
maker LDV was placed in administration after the collapse of a
res-cue deal by Malaysian firm Weststar collapsed. Up to 850 jobs
and thousands more in the sup-ply chain were threatened. The
company, owned by Russian giant GAZ, applied to Birmingham County
Court for administrators to be appointed.
(AFP, 6/8/09)
2009 Jun 9, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev visited Dagestan. He went to police bases and re-viewed
troops, lavishly covered by state-controlled TV. Medvedev blamed
what he called for-eign "freaks" for inciting the violence. Hours
after Medvedev left Dagestan, a riot police officer was shot and
killed as he headed home after work not far from a base where
Medvedev had watched counterterrorism exercises. In another part of
the Dagestan capital, a road police offi-cer was killed after trying
to stop a car to check documents.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 10, In southern
Dagestan a group of 10 gunmen attacked a police post with auto-matic
weapons and mortars, battling police troops for more than an hour.
The gunmen later es-caped into the forested mountains.
(AP, 6/10/09)
2009 Jun 14, Belarus boycotted
a Moscow-led security summit to protest a Russian ban on Belarusian
dairy products, deepening a politically charged dispute between the
two ex-Soviet neighbors. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and the
other Organization of the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) leaders
signed an agreement creating a joint rapid-reaction force that could
bolster the power and prestige of the seven-nation alliance, seen
largely as an ex-Soviet answer to NATO.
(AP, 6/14/09)
2009 Jun 15, Moscow vetoed a
Western-proposed resolution to extend the mandate of UN monitors in
the breakaway region of Abkhazia. It designed to buy time to
negotiate a long-term plan for the 16-year-old monitoring mission in
the Black Sea rebel region.
(Reuters, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 15, Leaders from
Central Asia, China and Afghanistan joined Russia's President Dmitry
Medvedev at a summit. Members of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan) and leaders of observer nations (Iran, Pakistan, India
and Mongolia) met in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg for
two days of talks that are expected to include extensive discussions
of Afghanistan.
(AP, 6/15/09)
2009 Jun 16, In Russia leaders
from the world's top emerging economic powers met for their first
summit to plot a strategy to increase their clout amid the global
crisis.
(AFP, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 16, Russia welcomed
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his first trip abroad since
his bitterly disputed re-election, a show of support for a leader
facing major pro-tests at home and questions from the West about the
legitimacy of the vote count.
(AP, 6/16/09)
2009 Jun 16, China’s Pres. Hu
Jintao announced a $10 billion loan to the Shanghai Coopera-tion
Organization, founded in 2001. The SCO grouped China, Russia,
Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
(Econ, 1/30/10,
p.51)(http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-06/16/content_11552439.htm)
2009 Jun 17, Belarus set up
customs posts on its border with Russia for the first time in 14
years as a trade dispute between the two countries escalated.
(AP, 6/17/09)
2009 Jun 17, China and Russia
expressed serious concern about tension on the Korean pen-insula
and, in the face of North Korea's rhetoric, joined international
pressure for it to return to nuclear talks.
(AP, 6/17/09)
2009 Jun 22, In Ingushetia a
suicide car bomber attacked a convoy carrying Yunus Bek Yevkurov
(45), the president of the troubled Russian province, critically
wounding him and kill-ing two bodyguards. A 3rd guard died later
from his wounds. A group, which calls itself the Ri-yadus Salikhin
Martyrs' Brigade, later said it staged the attack on the president
of Ingushetia because of his support for Kremlin policies and
because of his role in the second war in Chech-nya that began in
1999.
(AP, 6/22/09)(SFC, 6/23/09, p.A2)
2009 Jun 23, Swedish retailer
IKEA announced that it was suspending its investment in Rus-sia
because of “the “unpredictable character of administrative
procedures, a euphemism for graft.
(Econ, 7/4/09, p.63)
2009 Jun 24, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev arrived in Nigeria to sign gas and nuclear energy pacts,
becoming the first Kremlin leader to visit Africa's most populous
and energy-rich nation.
(AFP, 6/24/09)
2009 Jun 25, In Namibia Russian
Pres. Dmitry Medvedev called for boosting trade ties with Namibia,
at the start of the first-ever visit by a Kremlin chief to the
southern African nation. Pres. Hifikepunye Pohamba said his nation
was also keen to strengthen cooperation and build a durable economic
partnership.
(AFP, 6/25/09)
2009 Jun 25, Russia's Supreme
Court overturned the acquittal of three men charged with the 2006
murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist whose reporting on
Chechnya directly chal-lenged the country's most powerful leaders.
(AP, 6/25/09)
2009 Jun 27, NATO and Russia
agreed to resume military ties and agree to cooperate on
Af-ghanistan, counterterrorism and anti-piracy patrols at their
first high-level meeting since last year's war between Russia and
Georgia.
(AP, 6/27/09)
2009 Jun 27, In Dagestan
Interior Ministry troops patrolling a village south of Makhachkala
clashed with a group of 10 gunmen who tried to hole up in village
houses, but were driven into surrounding hillsides. A police officer
was killed. Officials then called in helicopter gunships and armored
vehicles to shell the forests where the gunmen hid out. Troops
sweeping the forest the next morning found the bodies of four
gunmen.
(AP, 6/28/09)
2009 Jun 28, In Ingushetia in a
region bordering Chechnya to the east, police troops clashed with
militants in an overnight gunbattle that killed four militants and
one police officer.
(AP, 6/28/09)
2009 Jul 1, In Russia thousands
of casinos, slot-machine parlors and betting halls across the
country shut down, complying with sweeping new restrictions that
require all gambling business to relocate to four remote regions of
the country. Lawmakers had signed the casino closure law in 2006.
Under the new law, casinos and slot machines will be allowed to
operate only in Kalin-ingrad on the Baltic Sea; the Primorsky region
on the Pacific coast; the mountainous Altai re-gion in Siberia; and
near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 1, US car giants
General Motors and Ford suspended operations on their production
lines in Russia as the deepening economic crisis squeezes Russian
consumers' demand for new cars.
(AP, 7/1/09)
2009 Jul 3, A top Kremlin aide
said Russia will allow the US to ship weapons across its terri-tory
to Afghanistan, in a gesture aimed at bolstering US military
operations and improving strained ties between Washington and
Moscow.
(AP, 7/3/09)
2009 Jul 6, In Russia President
Barack Obama opened his first Moscow summit with confi-dence. Obama
and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev struck a preliminary deal to
reduce their stockpiles of nuclear warheads to as few as 1,500 each,
pointing the two countries' arse-nals toward lower levels than in
any previous arms control agreement.
(AP, 7/6/09)
2009 Jul 6, Vasily Aksyonov
(b.1932), Russian novelist and Soviet dissident, died in Moscow. He
was forced into exile in 1980 after being branded as “anti-Soviet”
and lived in the US for over two decades. His over 20 novels
included “The Moscow Saga” (1994), which was adopted for a popular
TV series in 2004.
(SFC, 7/8/09, p.D5)
2009 Jul 7, In Moscow President
Barack Obama asked the Russian people to "forge a lasting
partnership" with the US, but he acknowledged after talks with PM
Vladimir Putin that on divi-sive issues there won't be "a meeting of
the minds anytime soon.
(AP, 7/7/09)
2009 Jul 13, In Russia 5
suspected militants and two law enforcement officers were killed in
separate attacks in the south. The militants were killed in two
separate gunbattles in Chechnya, while Interior Ministry troops in
Dagestan died in an ambush by insurgents.
(AP, 7/13/09)
2009 Jul 14, In Russia 6 men
emerged from three months of isolation in Soviet-era metal tubes
after completing an experiment simulating a mission to Mars.
(AP, 7/14/09)
2009 Jul 17, Russia said it
would lift a ban on live pigs and raw pork imports from the US state
of Wisconsin and Canada's Ontario province from July 18 due to what
it said was a "stabiliza-tion" of the situation of the H1N1 virus in
those places.
(Reuters, 7/17/09)
2009 Jul 20, The Russian rights
group, where slain activist Natalia Estemirova worked, said it has
suspended operations in Chechnya because of safety fears for her
co-workers. Memorial said it will continue tracking human rights
abuses in nearby Ingushetia. A spokesman for Che-chen leader Ramzan
Kadyrov, who has condemned the murder and promised to find those
re-sponsible, said a Moscow court had accepted a lawsuit from
Kadyrov against Memorial head Oleg Orlov for libel after the group's
chairman blamed Kadyrov for Estemirova's death.
(Reuters, 7/20/09)
2009 Jul 24, The Arctic Sea, a
Maltese-flagged bulk carrier, was boarded by 8 attackers pos-ing as
police. The timber carrying vessel was boarded off the Swedish
coast, searched by at-tackers, who reportedly tied up the crew for
12 hours. It disappeared following its last communi-cation on July
28. The failed to arrive at the Algerian port of Bejaia on August 4
as planned. The 4,700-ton ship, originally called Okhotsk, built in
1991, had a Russian crew of 13 and was oper-ated by a firm based in
the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. Russian naval warships tracked down
the ship off the Cape Verde islands and freed the crew. On August 18
Russia reported that eight people from Latvia, Estonia and Russia
had been arrested for piracy. On Aug 19 Yulia Latynina, a leading
Russian opposition journalist and commentator, reported that “the
Arctic Sea was carrying some sort of anti-aircraft or nuclear
contraption intended for a nice, peaceful country like Syria, and
they were caught with it." In March 2011 six men were convicted and
sentenced to 6-12 years in prison. Two others were already
convicted.
(Reuters, 8/9/09)(Reuters, 8/18/09)(AP,
8/19/09)(AP, 3/24/11)
2009 Jul 27, Russia’s Interior
Ministry said Semyon Mogilevich, an alleged organized crime boss who
is also wanted in the US, was released from pretrial detention 18
months after his ar-rest in Moscow. He has been on the FBI's wanted
list since 2003, accused of manipulating the stock of a
Pennsylvania-based company, YBM Magnex Inc., which collapsed in
1998.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 27, The leader of the
Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, led solemn prayers in
Kiev on the first day of 10-day visit aimed at reasserting Moscow's
dominance over church leaders in Ukraine.
(AP, 7/27/09)
2009 Jul 29, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship has docked successfully at the international
space station to deliver supplies for its six-member crew.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Jul 29, Cuban state media
said Russia and Cuba have signed agreements to search for oil in the
Gulf of Mexico. Moscow extended the island $150 million in credit
for construction ma-terials and farm machinery.
(AP, 7/29/09)
2009 Aug 1, Kyrgyzstan allowed
Russia to open a second military base on its territory, ex-panding
Moscow's military reach to balance against the US presence.
(Reuters, 8/1/09)
2009 Aug 5, Venezuela’s
President Hugo Chavez said his government will buy dozens of Russian
tanks because Venezuela feels threatened by a pending deal for the
US military to in-crease its presence in neighboring Colombia.
(AP, 8/6/09)
2009 Aug 6, Russia’s PM Putin
and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, signed an
agreements in Ankara that included the construction of part of the
South Stream gas pipe-line through the Black Sea.
(AP, 8/6/09)(Econ, 8/15/09, p.47)
2009 Aug 8, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev hailed the Russian victory in a war with Georgia a
year ago, saying the war had redrawn the map of the Caucasus for
good.
(Reuters, 8/8/09)
2009 Aug 11, A Thai court
rejected a US request to extradite Viktor Bout, an alleged Russian
arms smuggler dubbed the "Merchant of Death," dealing a setback to
American efforts to try him on charges of plotting to supply weapons
to Colombian rebels. The court rejected the ex-tradition request
because Bout had not been accused of committing any crimes against
Thai-land, which has not listed FARC as a terrorist group.
(AP, 8/11/09)
2009 Aug 12, Russian PM
Vladimir Putin made a surprise visit to Abkhazia and said Russia
will spend at least 15 billion rubles ($470 million) next year to
build Russian military bases in Abkhazia and tighten the separatist
Georgian region's borders.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Chechen Interior
Ministry spokesman Magomed Deniyev said 2 policemen were killed in
separate attacks during the night as they returned to their homes.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 12, Ruslan
Amerkhanov, the construction minister in Russia's violence-plagued
In-gushetia, was shot to death in his office. Ingush Security
Council secretary Alexei Vorobyov said investigators believe the
killing could be related to recent audits of construction projects
that turned up building violations and misuse of funds.
(AP, 8/12/09)
2009 Aug 16, Two Russian air
force fighters rehearsing acrobatic maneuvers collided near Moscow,
killing one pilot and sending the jets crashing into nearby vacation
homes.
(AP, 8/16/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Russia powerful
explosion took place during repair work at the Sayano-Shushinskaya
hydroelectric plant in southern Siberia. The death toll soon reached
69 with 6 still missing and feared dead after an engine room was
suddenly flooded. The accident produced an oil spill and the slick
that floated down the Yenisei River.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)(AP, 8/21/09)(AP,
8/23/09)
2009 Aug 17, Russian media
reported that the Arctic Sea has been found near Cape Verde and that
the ship's 15-man Russian crew has been taken aboard a Russian naval
vessel.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, It was reported
that 200,000 Russian military officers faced early retirement, as
the government conducts a sweeping reform that will eliminate the
jobs of six out of every 10 members of its top-heavy officer corps.
(AP, 8/17/09)
2009 Aug 17, In Ingushetia a
suicide bomber attacked a police station in Nazran city in Rus-sia's
North Caucasus with an explosives-laden truck, killing at least 21
people and wounding more than 100 others. 9 officers were still
missing.
(AP, 8/17/09)(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 17, Czech media
reported that two Russians have been ordered out of Prague,
in-cluding a deputy military attache. Prague has previously
complained about an increase in Rus-sian spying that it linked to
the US plans. Russia responded by ordering two Czech diplomats out
of Russia.
(Reuters, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 18, Russia's President
Dmitry Medvedev hosted Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres for talks
that were expected to focus on the Middle East and the Iranian
nuclear standoff.
(AP, 8/18/09)
2009 Aug 20, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin ordered that key parts of Russia's aging
infrastruc-ture be checked and upgraded after a power plant accident
in Siberia left scores feared dead and strained the vast region's
power supply. The confirmed death toll in the power plant acci-dent
rose to 17 after three more bodies were found. 57 were still
missing.
(AP, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 20, Russian
authorities flew the suspected hijackers of the cargo vessel Arctic
Sea to Moscow and took off them for interrogation, dismissing
suggestions that the ship may have been carrying weapons.
(Reuters, 8/20/09)
2009 Aug 26, Top Russian
officials acknowledged for the first time that the Arctic Sea, a
ship hijacked last month in the Baltic Sea, might have been carrying
a suspicious cargo, deepening the mystery around its seizure.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, Russia, worried
about North Korean missile and nuclear tests, said it has de-ployed
sophisticated air defenses in its Far East region to protect against
any potential test mishap.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 26, In the Republic of
Congo 7 people, including five Russian crew members, were killed
when a cargo plane crashed on the outskirts of Brazzaville.
(AFP, 8/26/09)
2009 Aug 27, In Russia Sergei
Mikhalkov (96), an author favored by Stalin who wrote the lyr-ics
for the Soviet and Russian national anthems, died. He fathered two
noted film directors. As a functionary and later chairman of the
government-regulated Soviet Writers' Union, Mikhalkov became an
integral part of the propaganda machine designed to indoctrinate
Soviet citizens and weed out dissidents.
(AP, 8/27/09)(Econ, 9/12/09, p.96)
2009 Aug 31, Deere & Co.,
the world's largest agricultural-equipment maker, said its board of
directors has approved a plan to establish a new manufacturing and
parts center in Russia.
(AP, 8/31/09)
2009 Sep 1, Ukrainian PM Yulia
Tymoshenko said Russia and Ukraine have resolved a long standing
dispute over natural gas supplies, after meeting her Russian
counterpart Vladimir Putin at a resort on the Baltic coast in
northern Poland.
(Reuters, 9/1/09)
2009 Sep 3, Russian’s Foreign
Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko warned Georgia that attempts to
block ships from reaching a Moscow-aligned separatist region of
Georgia could end in military intervention.
(AP, 9/3/09)
2009 Sep 7, Israel officially
approved the construction of hundreds of new homes in the West Bank,
deepening an already unprecedented rift with the US over Israeli
settlement expansion. Israel PM Netanyahu vanished from public view
in Israel for most of the day. His office said he had visited a
secret security facility. It was later confirmed that he had made a
secret trip to Russia, which included a meeting with the
Russia’s Pres. Dmitry Medvedev.
(AP, 9/7/09)(AP, 9/20/09)
2009 Sep 8, Russia's foreign
minister rejected speculation that the Arctic Sea, a hijacked
Russian-crewed freighter, was carrying S-300 missiles possibly
destined for Iran. A Russian shipping expert and an EU anti-piracy
official have speculated that the vessel was carrying a clandestine
cargo, possibly S-300 surface-to-air missiles for Iran or Syria.
(AP, 9/8/09)
2009 Sep 10, In Russia
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez recognized the pro-Russian re-bel
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, a rare
boost to the Kremlin's campaign for their international acceptance.
(Reuters 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 10, GM announced that
it agreed to the sale of 55% of Ruesselsheim-based Adam Opel and
Vauxhall unit to Canadian auto parts maker Magna International Inc.
and Russian lender Sberbank. Detroit-based GM will keep a 35% stake
and continue to work with Opel on developing vehicles, sharing
technology and engineering resources.
(AP, 9/11/09)
2009 Sep 12, President Evo
Morales said Bolivia has decided to buy a presidential plane from
Russia after Moscow offered to set up an aircraft maintenance center
in the South American nation. Defense Minister Walker San Miguel
announced in early August that Bolivia had agreed to purchase an
Antonov presidential plane with satellite phone, Internet links and
a meeting room from Russia for $30 million.
(AP, 9/12/09)
2009 Sep 13, In central Russia
5 soldiers died in a fire at a military base in Tambov. A state news
report said the blaze may have destroyed sensitive security
documents.
(SFC, 9/14/09, p.A2)
2009 Sep 15, Russian news
agencies said the country's coast guard warned that it will detain
Georgian ships entering the territorial waters of Abkhazia. Viktor
Turfanov, the head of the coastal division of the border guards
service, said that Georgia this year has intercepted more than 20
ships in Abkhazian waters.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Sep 16, Russia’s Finance
Minister Alexei Kudrin said Russia has reached a settlement with
Bank of New York Mellon over a $22.5 billion lawsuit against the
bank stemming from a 1990s money laundering scheme by one of its
executives. Russia would receive no less than $14 million for court
costs under the long-anticipated, out-of-court deal. The government
would also get a $4 billion discounted loan from the bank, an "act
of goodwill." The two-year court case stems from a decade-old
scandal in which a Bank of NY vice president and her husband were
convicted of illegally wiring $7.5 billion of Russian money into
accounts at the bank.
(AP, 9/16/09)
2009 Sep 19, Russia said it
will scrap a plan to deploy missiles near Poland since Washington
has dumped a planned missile shield in Eastern Europe. It also
harshly criticized Iran's presi-dent for new comments denying the
Holocaust.
(AP, 9/19/09)
2009 Sep 19, Lt. Col.
Yelizaveta Mukasei (97), a Soviet spy who worked undercover in the
West with her husband, died in Moscow. Mukasei, whose code name was
Elza, lived in Los Angeles from 1939 to 1943 when her husband,
Mikhail, was working undercover there. Mikhail, whose code name was
Zephyr, died last year at age 101.
(AP, 9/21/09)
2009 Sep 30, An EU-commissioned
report said Georgia's attack on its breakaway South Os-setia region
marked the start of last year's war with Russia, which retaliated
with excessive force.
(AP, 9/30/09)
2009 Sep 30, In Kazakhstan
Canadian circus billionaire Guy Laliberte blasted off in a Russian
Soyuz spaceship to become the world's seventh space tourist.
(Reuters, 9/30/09)
2009 Oct 9, Vyacheslav Ivankov
(69), a Russian crime boss who spent nearly 10 years in a US prison,
died in a Moscow hospital, two months after being shot several times
coming out of a restaurant on July 28. He was arrested by the FBI in
1995 and convicted of trying to extort millions of dollars from an
investment firm run by Russian emigres in New York. He was
extra-dited to Russia from the US in 2004 to face murder charges,
but was acquitted.
(AP, 10/9/09)
2009 Oct 11, The United Russia
party won an overwhelming victory in more than 7,000 local elections
in 75 of Russia's 83 regions. In Moscow, the party won all but three
seats on the 35-member city council. United Russia served as a power
base for PM Vladimir Putin, who has not ruled out a return to the
presidency in 2012.
(AP, 10/14/09)
2009 Oct 11, The Russian Soyuz
capsule carrying Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte and two
other space travelers landed safely in Kazakhstan, ending the
entertainment tycoon's mirth-ful space odyssey.
(AP, 10/11/09)
2009 Oct 12, Russian PM
Vladimir Putin landed in China in an effort to bolster energy,
politi-cal and military ties between the former rival nations turned
strategic partners.
(AP, 10/12/09)
2009 Oct 13, China and Russia
signed a framework agreement that could see a steady flow of natural
gas to energy-hungry China from its resource-rich neighbor.
(AP, 10/13/09)
2009 Oct 14, Dozens of Russian
lawmakers staged a rare walkout from parliament to protest what they
and independent monitors describe as rigged local elections across
Russia.
(AP, 10/14/09)
2009 Oct 14, A security summit
between China, Russia and their Central Asian neighbors wrapped up
in Beijing with vague promises to deepen economic cooperation but no
public men-tion of regional flashpoints like Afghanistan.
(Reuters, 10/14/09)
2009 Oct 14, US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton wrapped up a European tour by calling on
Russia to uphold human rights and prevent attacks on activists who
challenge the Kremlin.
(AP, 10/14/09)
2009 Oct 16, A Russian court
sentenced an army sergeant to nine years in jail for passing on
information to Georgia during the time of its war with Russia.
Aleksandar Georgijevic, a Serbian national, was jailed for 8 years
for attempting to collect information on a number of Russian
mili-tary projects in 1998.
(Reuters, 10/16/09)
2009 Oct 18, Russia's unmanned
Progress M-03M docked with the orbital station after a three-day
trip up from Earth. It delivered food, fuel, oxygen and other
supplies to the Interna-tional Space Station.
(AP, 10/18/09)
2009 Oct 20, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev brought a euro1 billion ($1.5 billion) loan to
recession-hit Serbia, as Moscow sought to expand its political and
economic influence in the Balkans with the first-ever visit to
Belgrade by a Russian president.
(AP, 10/20/09)
2009 Oct 22, The EU's
parliament awarded its annual Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought
to three prominent Russian rights activists, in recognition of the
difficult conditions they face in defending human rights in Russia
today. The prize was awarded to Lyudmila Alexeyeva (82), Sergei
Kovalyov (79) and Oleg Orlov (56) on behalf of the human rights
organization Memorial and "all other human rights defenders in
Russia."
(AP, 10/22/09)
2009 Oct 25, In southern Russia
Maksharip Aushev a prominent opposition activist in In-gushetia was
shot and killed by unidentified gunmen in at least the third such
killing in the North Caucasus region in just over three months.
Aushev died when several assailants sprayed his vehicle with
automatic gunfire from a passing car. A woman traveling with him was
badly wounded in the attack on a road in the neighboring province of
Kabardino-Balkariya.
(AP, 10/25/09)
2009 Oct 29, Somali pirates
continued their rampage around the Seychelles and seized a
Thailand-flagged trawler, believed to be Russian-owned with a crew
of 25. Somali pirates cur-rently held a total of nine ships and
around 200 crew.
(AP, 10/29/09)
2009 Oct 30, President Dmitry
Medvedev told Russians that there can be no justification for the
Soviet government's crimes against its own people, lamenting
millions of deaths and "maimed destinies" in some of the strongest
criticism of the Communist era to come from the Kremlin since
Vladimir Putin came to power a decade ago.
(AP, 10/31/09)
2009 Oct 31, A Russian news
agency reported that Moscow plans to buy a French amphibi-ous
assault ship, the first such purchase from a NATO country, as the
Kremlin seeks to reaffirm Russia's global reach.
(AP, 10/31/09)
2009 Nov 1, A Russian
heavy-lift military cargo plane crashed on takeoff in Siberia,
killing all 11 crew members on board.
(AP, 11/1/09)
2009 Nov 2, In Russia Shabattai
Kalmanovitch (60), a prominent businessman, was shot dead in Moscow.
He had been convicted in Israel of being a KGB spy.
(SFC, 11/3/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 5, A Moscow court
approved the arrest of a man and a woman suspected in the January 19
killing of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. The male
suspect, ultrana-tionalist Nikita Tikhonov, confessed to the crime
after his arrest saying he did so out of “per-sonal enmity” for one
of the victims.
(AP, 11/6/09)(SFC, 11/7/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 5, Memorial, a Russian
rights group, said Chechen authorities have abducted Arbi
Khachukayev, a human rights advocate in Moscow, who has been
critical of Chechnya's Krem-lin-backed leader.
(AP, 11/5/09)
2009 Nov 7, British boxer David
Haye (29) won the WBA Heavyweight crown against 7-foot, 2-inch
Russian Nikolai Valuev in a 12-round bout in Germany. Haye became
the first Briton to hold a world heavyweight crown since Lennox
Lewis retired in 2003.
(AFP, 11/8/09)
2009 Nov 12, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev called on his country to shed its dependence on ex-ports of
raw materials and to adopt a more pragmatic foreign policy aimed at
attracting invest-ment and promoting growth.
(SFC, 11/13/09, p.A5)
2009 Nov 13, In Russia huge
explosions and fire ripped through a naval munitions facility in the
Ulyanovsk province for hours, killing two firefighters and prompting
the evacuation of thou-sands of civilians nearby. 11 civilians and
military personnel were unaccounted for.
(AP, 11/13/09)
2009 Nov 13, In Russia
prosecutors said police have arrested three homeless people
sus-pected of eating a 25-year-old man they had butchered and
selling other bits of the corpse to a local kebab house. Parts of a
human body had been found near a bus stop in the outskirts of the
Russian city of Perm, 1,150 km (720 miles) east of Moscow.
(Reuters, 11/16/09)
2009 Nov 15, In Singapore
President Barack Obama said the United States and Russia would have
a replacement treaty on reducing nuclear arms ready for approval by
year's end, an an-nouncement designed as an upbeat ending to a
summit with Asia-Pacific leaders. Obama also attended a second
summit with leaders of the 10 southeast Asian countries that make up
the ASEAN group. Obama then arrived in Shanghai, launching a
three-day visit to an important global US partner and his first
travels ever in China.
(AP, 11/15/09)
2009 Nov 16, In Russia Ivan
Khutorskoi (26), an anti-hate crimes campaigner, was killed in the
entrance of his Moscow apartment building with a shot to the head.
The former punk rocker, known as the Bonebreaker, had provided
security for meetings of antifascists. He also was known for
organizing underground bare-knuckle boxing matches among them, and
taking part in violent attacks on ultranationalists.
(AP, 11/17/09)(AP, 11/18/09)
2009 Nov 16, Russian lawyer
Sergei Magnitsky (37) died after being denied medical assis-tance
for pancreatitis while in pretrial detention at Moscow's Butyrskaya
jail. He was arrested in November 2008 on tax-evasion charges linked
to his work with William Browder, a British inves-tor barred from
Russia in 2005, as an alleged security risk. On Nov 15, 2010,
authorities claimed that Magnitsky was suspected of stealing the
$230 million that he said Interior Ministry officers had defrauded
from the state. Magnitsky originally testified against Interior
Ministry offi-cers Pavel Karpov and Artyom Kuznetsov, accusing them
of stealing the money before the same officers initiated proceedings
against him. On Nov 28, 2011, a private investigation, com-piled by
Browder, a US-born investor, concluded that Magnitsky was severely
beaten and de-nied medical treatment in prison, and accused the
government of failing to prosecute those re-sponsible.
(http://tinyurl.com/yc25jyq)(Econ, 11/28/09,
p.57)(AP, 11/15/10)(AP, 11/28/11)
2009 Nov 19, Russia's
Constitutional Court effectively outlawed the death penalty, saying
a moratorium on capital punishment should remain in force until the
nation fully bans executions.
(AP, 11/19/09)
2009 Nov 19, In Russia a gunman
killed Rev. Daniil Sysoyev, a Russian Orthodox priest, in his Moscow
church and seriously wounded the reverend's assistant.
(AP, 11/20/09)
2009 Nov 21, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin pledged to widen the country’s anti-crisis aid
pack-age with a car scrappage scheme and mortgage support to jolt
the economy out of the worst recession in 15 years. President Dmitry
Medvedev sharply criticized officials in the ruling Krem-lin-backed
party for manipulating recent regional votes, saying it must learn
to win fairly.
(AP, 11/21/09)
2009 Nov 21, Russian spaceship
designer Konstantin Feoktistov (83), the only non-Communist space
traveler in the history of the Soviet space program, died. In 1964,
he traveled aboard the Voskhod spaceship as part of the first group
space flight in history.
(AP, 11/22/09)
2009 Nov 23, In Russia 8
military personnel were killed when a truckload of ammunition
ex-ploded as they cleaned up after the huge Nov 13 conflagration at
a munitions depot in Uly-anovsk.
(AP, 11/23/09)
2009 Nov 25, The Canadian
dollar rose to a one-week high against the US dollar after the
Russian central bank said it was preparing to invest some of its
foreign exchange reserves in the Canadian currency.
(Reuters, 11/25/09)
2009 Nov 27, In Russia a
homemade bomb planted on the tracks of the high-speed Moscow-to-St.
Petersburg route, caused a derailment of the 14-car Nevsky Express.
26 people were killed and dozens more injured. Chechen militants
later claimed responsibility and vowed further "acts of sabotage" in
a letter posted on a rebel website.
(AP, 11/28/09)(AP, 12/2/09)
2009 Nov 28, French Transport
Minister Dominique Bussereau said Russia has given the green light
for Air France's A380 superjumbo to overfly Siberia, opening the way
for a projected Paris-Tokyo service. The accord was approved by PM
Vladimir Putin at the end of a two-day visit to France which saw a
number of business deals concluded. Putin's trip also secured a deal
for French investment in a key pipeline project and the struggling
Avtovaz car maker, as well as a promise that France will consider
selling Moscow a huge amphibious assault ship.
(AFP, 11/28/09)
2009 Nov, In Russia police
officer Maj. Alexey Dymovsky posted three videos on YouTube in which
he said he was promised a promotion in return for jailing an
innocent person. He also ac-cused his superiors of forcing officers
to fake reports on unsolved crimes. In December prose-cutors in the
southern Krasnodar region filed fraud charges against Dymovsky,
saying that Dy-movsky had embezzled about $800 while working as a
narcotics investigator.
(AP, 12/28/09)
2009 Dec 3, Pope Benedict XVI
and visiting Russian Pres. Dmitry Medvedev agreed to up-grade
Vatican-Kremlin relations to full diplomatic ties.
(SFC, 12/4/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 3, Rusal, the world’s
largest aluminium company, said it had reached a deal to
re-structure debts of $17 billion, including $7 billion held by
foreigners, clearing the way for an IPO. Russia’s state-owned
Vnesheconobank (VEB) had recently agreed to extend a $4.5 billion
loan to Rusal, lead by Oleg Deripaska, one of the country’s richest
tycoons.
(Econ, 12/5/09, p.73)
2009 Dec 5, In Russia a blaze
sparked by onstage fireworks tore through the Lame Horse nightclub
ceiling covered in decorative twigs and plastic sheeting, killing at
least 136 people and critically injuring about 90 in the industrial
city of Perm in the Ural Mountains. It was the coun-try’s deadliest
fire since the fall of the Soviet Union. By late December the death
toll reached 152 with 74 people still hospitalized.
(AP, 12/5/09)(AP, 12/10/09)(AP, 12/25/09)
2009 Dec 7, President Hugo
Chavez said that Venezuela has received thousands of Russian-made
missiles and rocket launchers as part of his government's military
preparations for a pos-sible armed conflict with neighboring
Colombia.
(AP, 12/7/09)
2009 Dec 8, Russia's highest
court upheld a ruling halting the activities of a regional branch of
Jehovah's Witnesses and banning dozens of its publications in what
the group deplored as an unfair move.
(AP, 12/8/09)
2009 Dec 9, Russia's
error-prone Bulava intercontinental ballistic missile suffered its
eighth failure in 12 tests.
(AP, 12/10/09)
2009 Dec 12, Iraq sold Russian
firm Lukoil rights to the West Qurna-2 oil field, one of the world's
biggest untapped oil fields, on the 2nd day of an auction. Lukoil
will work with junior part-ner StatoilHydro of Norway.
(AP, 12/12/09)
2009 Dec 16, Yegor Gaidar (53),
Russian economist and former acting prime minister (1992), died at
his Moscow-area home. He oversaw Russia's painful economic
transition from commu-nism to the free market in the 1990s.
(AP, 12/16/09)(Econ, 12/19/09, p.149)
2009 Dec 16, In Dagestan,
Russia, police killed three suspected militants in a clash.
(AP, 12/17/09)
2009 Dec 16, Vietnam said it
has ordered submarines and fighter jets from Russia, its former
communist ally, in a deal reportedly worth hundreds of millions of
dollars.
(AP, 12/16/09)
2009 Dec 17, In Ingushetia,
Russia, a suicide car bomber attacked a group of police and
sol-diers in Nazran, wounding at least 23 people. Also in Nazran 2
security officers were killed in a drive-by shooting.
(AP, 12/17/09)
2009 Dec 22, Hansjoerg Haber,
EU monitoring mission chief, said Russia has failed to fully observe
an EU-brokered peace deal that ended last year's war with Georgia.
He said Russia has not met an obligation to withdraw its forces to
positions held before the August 2008 con-flict.
(AP, 12/23/09)
2009 Dec 23, Georgia's Foreign
Ministry reached a deal with Russia to open a border cross-ing that
has been closed for three years. The two sides agreed during
Swiss-brokered talks that the Verkhny Lars transit point will open
in March.
(AP, 12/24/09)
2009 Dec 24, Russia’s President
Dmitry Medvedev ordered reform of the country's Interior Ministry,
saying it was a necessary response to police abuses that have
angered Russians and eroded public trust in the government.
(AP, 12/24/09)
2009 Dec 27, Isaac Schwartz
(b.1923), Russian composer, died at his home just outside St.
Petersburg. His music adorned some of the most popular movies of the
Soviet era. Schwartz wrote the music for a total of 110 movies and
35 theatrical performances.
(AP, 12/28/09)
2009 Dec 28, Slovakia said that
Russia had warned it might halt oil supplies through Ukraine to
three European Union countries over a price dispute.
(AFP, 12/28/09)
2009 Dec 29, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin said that Russia will build new weapons to offset the
planned US missile defense and urged Washington to share detailed
data about its missile shield under a new arms control deal. The
Kremlin said President Dmitry Medvedev has signed a bill banning the
jailing of people suspected of tax crimes and has fired another
senior prison official following the death in custody of a tax
lawyer in November.
(AP, 12/29/09)
2009 Dec 31, Moscow police
detained dozens of people at an anti-Kremlin protest, including
Lyudmila Alexeyeva (82), a prominent rights activist. The New Year's
Eve protest is a repeat of actions held on the 31st of July, August
and October. The timing is a nod to the 31st Article of the Russian
constitution, which guarantees the right of assembly.
(AP, 12/31/09)
2009 Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov
(b.1964), Russian businessman and politician, wrote the preface to
the pseudonymous bestselling satirical novel “Almost Zero.” The
author was "Natan Dubovitsky", readable as a male form of Surkov’s
wife's name. Conflicting statements in the preface added to
speculation that Surkov was the author of the novel.
(Econ, 12/10/11,
p.30)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov)
2009 Russia began to modernize
the Syrian port of Tartus, its only military base outside the former
Soviet Union.
(Econ, 1/14/12, p.47)
2010 Jan 1, The Russian
government set a minimum price for vodka that more than doubles the
cost of the cheapest vodka on the market in an effort to fight
rampant alcoholism.
(AP, 1/1/10)
2010 Jan 6, In Russia a suicide
bomber blew up an explosives-packed car at a police station in
Dagestan province, killing six officers and wounding at least 16
people on the outskirts of Makhachkala. Investigators determined
that the homemade bomb packed into the Niva, a small Russian-made
SUV, was equivalent to 80 to 100 km (175 to 220 pounds) of TNT.
(AP, 1/6/10)
2010 Jan 7, Russian police in
Dagestan killed two suspected militants in a counterterrorism
operation launched in response to a suicide blast that took the
lives of six officers. One of the slain militants was named as
Ismail Ichakayev, a man reportedly wanted for masterminding several
bombings and other attacks on officials.
(AP, 1/7/10)
2010 Jan 8, An avalanche in
Russia's southern Caucasus mountain range killed five climbers
including an instructor. The novice climbers, all from Moscow or St.
Petersburg had undergone an intensive, six-day training course in
the climbing base of Bezengi, in the province of Kabardino-Balkaria.
Four climbers in a party of nine survived the snow slide, which
struck as they were ascending the Gedan-tau peak.
(AP, 1/9/10)
2010 Jan 14, A Russian Su-27
fighter jet disappeared while on a training mission in the
coun-try's far east. Late-night traffic on one of Moscow’s roads
slowed as a couple's explicit esca-pades appeared across the
9-by-6-meter (yard) display. A hacker attack was likely to blame.
City police said they have yet to receive any complaints and have
not opened an investigation.
(AP, 1/14/10)(AP, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 15, Russian lawmakers
ended years of resistance and ratified an international agreement
intended to strengthen and speed up the work of the European Court
of Human Rights. The measure still needed to be approved by the
upper house and signed by Pres. Med-vedev, but both steps were
expected to occur soon.
(AP, 1/15/10)
2010 Jan 20, A French court
ruled that a Russian Orthodox cathedral built on the French Rivi-era
nearly a century ago under Czar Nicholas II now belongs to Moscow.
The ruling was a de-feat for an association founded by Russians who
fled the Bolshevik Revolution that has been fighting to maintain its
control over the Saint Nicholas Cathedral in Nice, and its
archbishop is accusing the Russian government of a land grab as part
of a national pride campaign.
(AP, 1/20/10)
2010 Jan 20, In Siberia
Konstantin Popov (47), a reporter for Tomskaya Nedelya weekly, died
after nearly two weeks in a coma. He had been taken in police
custody to sober up. Police offi-cer Alexei Mitayev (26) shot him in
the genitals after beating him up. On Feb 11, 2011, Mitayev was
convicted of beating and shooting Popov and was sentenced to 12
years in prison.
(AP, 2/11/11)
2010 Jan 22, In Russia a court
sanctioned on fraud charges the arrest of Alexei Dymovsky, a police
officer who has complained on YouTube of abuse and corruption in the
country's law en-forcement system. In November Dymovsky posted 3
videos on YouTube in which he said he was promised a promotion in
return for jailing an innocent person. He also accused his
superi-ors of forcing officers to fake reports on unsolved crimes.
Dymovsky was fired and founded a rights defense group.
(AP, 1/22/10)
2010 Jan 23, Russian PM
Vladimir Putin declared that peace has returned to North Cauca-sus,
the center of a growing Islamist insurgency, and called for the
region's economy to be re-built. He also ordered officials in the
North Caucasus to ensure what he called the "normal work" of human
rights groups operating in the volatile region.
(Reuters, 1/23/10)(AP, 1/23/10)
2010 Jan 26, NATO and Russia
formally resumed military ties in the latest sign of improving
relations between the Cold War rivals as they move to boost
cooperation in the fight against in-surgents in Afghanistan.
(AP, 1/26/10)
2010 Jan 27, NATO's top officer
said that Russia had agreed to boost cooperation with the alliance
in Afghanistan, including opening more transit routes for supplies
to international troops and helping service Soviet-built helicopters
used by the security forces. NATO said it had final-ized an
agreement with Kazakhstan to open the last leg on an overland route
to Afghanistan from Europe via Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan,
offering an alternative to the one through Pakistan.
(AP, 1/27/10)(AP, 1/28/10)
2010 Jan 29, Russia test-flew a
long-awaited new fighter aircraft, determined to challenge the
United States for technical superiority in the skies and impress
weapons buyers.
(Reuters, 1/29/10)
2010 Jan 30, Russian PM
Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying that Libya has signed an arms
deal with Russia worth 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion).
(Reuters, 1/30/10)
2010 Jan 30, Russia opened its
first new casino, under a plan to limit legalized gambling to 4
comparatively remote areas, since it closed all casinos a half year
earlier. Along with the open-ing in Azov city, the new law limits
legalized gambling to the Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea, the
Altai region of Siberia, and the Primorski region of the Far East.
(SSFC, 1/31/10, p.A6)
2010 Jan 31, In Russia several
hundred demonstrators shouting "Shame!" gathered in a cen-tral
Moscow square, defying a ban imposed by authorities. Moscow police
detained dozens of people at an anti-Kremlin protest, including
several prominent opposition leaders. A separate demonstration was
held by dozens of residents of the Rechnik settlement to protest the
demoli-tion of their homes ordered by Mayor Yury Luzhkov.
(AP, 1/31/10)(Econ, 2/6/10, p.57)
2010 Jan, Scientists at
Russia’s Flerov Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions announced internally
that they had succeeded in detecting the decay of a new element with
Z=117 using the reac-tions.
(SFC, 4/8/10,
p.C5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ununseptium)
2010 Jan, Russian authorities
confiscated the computers of Baikal Environmental Wave in Irkutsk in
an alleged search for pirated software. The group was protesting a
decision by PM Putin to reopen a paper factory that had long
polluted nearby Lake Baikal. Similar raids in re-cent years have
taken place against dozens of outspoken advocacy groups.
(SSFC, 9/12/10, p.A10)
2010 Feb 3, Ukraine's security
service said 5 Russian FSB agents were detained last month after
being caught trying to obtain confidential military information from
a Ukrainian citizen. The FSB said the Ukrainian citizen its agents
were working with had himself been apprehended in November while
allegedly spying on neighboring Moldova's Moscow-backed breakaway
Trans-Dniester republic.
(AP, 2/3/10)
2010 Feb 4, A leading Russian
lawmaker said Russia and Western powers have moved closer to
agreement on the need for new sanctions against Iran over its
nuclear program.
(AP, 2/4/10)
2010 Feb 4, Russia hailed a new
agreement with the United States intended to boost joint anti-drug
efforts, but urged the US and NATO to do more to stem a flow of
drugs from Afghani-stan that has sickened millions of Russians.
(AP, 2/4/10)
2010 Feb 5, Russian PM Vladimir
Putin criticized his party following an unusually large oppo-sition
protest, saying it has fed the country with empty promises.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 5, Latvia sold a
deserted town built around a Soviet-era radar station to a Russian
investor who bid $3.1 million at an unusual auction. The town,
formerly known as Skrunda-1, housed about 5,000 people during the
Cold War but was abandoned over a decade ago.
(AP, 2/5/10)
2010 Feb 6, Interfax reported
that French Pres. Sarkozy has sanctioned the sale of a Mistral
amphibious assault ship to Russia.
(SSFC, 2/7/10, p.A6)
2010 Feb 11, Italy's Fiat SpA
and Russian automobile company Sollers announced a euro2.4 billion
($3.3 billion) joint venture to produce up to 500,000 vehicles per
year in Russia in a bid to become the country's second-largest car
maker.
(AP, 2/11/10)
2010 Feb 11, Russian government
forces killed 4 innocent civilians in the North Caucasus. 4 garlic
pickers died along with 18 suspected Islamic militants in a
three-day shootout in the mountainous forests that straddle the
North Caucasus provinces of Ingushetia and Chechnya.
(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Feb 12, Russian officials
said that at least 14 suspected Islamic militants had been killed
and one police officer wounded in two days of fighting in the
southern province of Ingushetia.
(AP, 2/13/10)
2010 Feb 15, Israel's PM
Netanyahu called for "crippling sanctions" against Iran over its
nu-clear program after a meeting in Moscow with Russia's top
officials, whom he praised for show-ing "an understanding" over the
issue.
(AP, 2/15/10)
2010 Feb 16, Georgia's
breakaway Abkhazia region said it would allow sponsor Russia to
build a military base on its soil for land troops, strengthening the
region's dependence on Mos-cow and provoking ire from Tbilisi..
(www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61F3JE20100216)
2010 Feb 25, In Russia the
Moscow City Court said in a statement that 12 mostly underage
neo-Nazis who called themselves "White Wolves" have been charged
with 11 murders and one assault since April 2007. Nine
ultranationalists were sentenced to up to 23 years in jail for 6
hate-motivated killings and one assault.
(AP, 2/25/10)(SFC, 2/26/10, p.A2)
2010 Mar 1, France and Russia
pursued their burgeoning courtship with a formal state visit by
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Paris, which is angling to sell
Moscow a massive war-ship and secure stakes in pipelines pumping
Russian gas to western Europe.
(AP, 3/1/10)
2010 Mar 1, Georgia and Russia
reopened their only direct border crossing, more than three years
after it was closed amid rising tension that erupted into war in
2008.
(AP, 3/1/10)
2010 Mar 10, In London
self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky won his libel case
against RTR, a Kremlin-owned broadcaster, that aired allegations he
masterminded the 2006 murder in London of former KGB renegade agent
Alexander Litvinenko. RTR, which did not take part in the hearings,
called the judgment illegal.
(AP, 3/10/10)
2010 Mar 12, India signed 5
deals in New Delhi to purchase more than $7 billion in hardware and
expertise from Russia. The agreements included the construction of
at least 12 civilian nu-clear reactors, an aircraft carrier and a
fleet of MiG-29 fighters.
(AFP, 3/12/10)(SFC, 3/13/10, p.A2)
2010 Mar 14, Millions of
Russians voted in regional elections in a mid-term test of President
Dmitry Medvedev's pledge to loosen the Kremlin's grip on the
political system. The ruling United Russia party appeared headed for
an expected victory in regional elections, although many
dis-gruntled voters threw their support behind opposition
candidates.
(Reuters, 3/14/10)(AP, 3/15/10)
2010 Mar 18, Astronauts from
the US and Russia landed safely in northern Kazakhstan's chilly
steppes after spending almost six months on the International Space
Station.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon signed a cooperation agreement with Niko-lai
Bordyuzha, the head of the Collective Treaty Organization, a
Moscow-dominated alliance that includes Russia and six other former
Soviet republics.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 19, In Russia the
international Quartet for the Middle East met in Moscow in a bid to
revive the peace process despite tensions after Israel's
announcement of new settler homes and a deadly rocket attack.
(AFP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 20, In Russia
thousands of protesters rallied in several cities to protest the
govern-ment's economic policy and demand more political freedoms.
(AP, 3/20/10)
2010 Mar 21, India successfully
tested a new, more maneuverable version of its BrahMos su-personic
cruise missile that was jointly developed with Russia.
(AP, 3/21/10)
2010 Mar 24, The US and Russia
reached a breakthrough agreement for a historic treaty to reduce
their nuclear arsenals. Prague announced it will host the signing of
a new US-Russian treaty to reduce long-range nuclear weapons. The
deal would replace the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
(AP, 3/24/10)(SFC, 3/25/10, p.A10)
2010 Mar 26, Pres. Obama
concluded a new strategic arms reduction treaty in a call with
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
(AFP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Russia an
apartment block west of Moscow partially collapsed following a
suspected gas explosion, killing three people and possibly trapping
others under the rubble.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 27, In Russia former
Soviet world chess champion Vasily Smyslov (89) died of heart
failure. Smyslov beat Mikhail Botvinnik in 1957 to become the
seventh world champion, before losing in a re-match the following
year. His career in the top flight of world chess spanned some four
decades. He was beaten by Garry Kasparov in 1984 in the
Candidates Final match for the right to challenge Anatoly Karpov for
the world title, which Kasparov went on to capture.
(Reuters, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 28, Russia's Pres.
Medvedev thought the country had too much time on its hands, so on
Sunday he eliminated two of its 11 time zones.
(AP, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 28, In Russia
thousands of angry people demonstrated in the northwestern city of
Arkhangelsk against the high cost of living and demanded that the
government of PM Vladimir Putin quits.
(AP, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 28, President Barack
Obama made a surprise visit to Afghanistan for a firsthand look at
the 8-year-old war he inherited and dramatically escalated. German
Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere held talks in Afghanistan on
stuttering progress in training the country's security forces.
Russia accused the US of conniving with Afghanistan's drug producers
by re-fusing to destroy opium crops, the second time in a week
Moscow has taken a swipe at the West over drug policy.
(AP, 3/28/10)(AFP, 3/28/10)(Reuters, 3/28/10)
2010 Mar 29, In Russia 2 female
suicide bombers blew themselves up in twin attacks on Moscow subway
stations jam-packed with rush-hour passengers, killing 39 people.
Officials blamed the carnage on rebels from the Caucasus region.
Five people remained in critical condi-tion out of 71 hospitalized
after the blasts. The death toll soon rose to 40 as one of the
injured died in a hospital.
(AP, 3/29/10)(AP, 3/30/10)(AP, 4/2/10)
2010 Mar 29, Russia and the
International Atomic Energy Agency set up the world's first nu-clear
fuel bank, signing into life a plan meant to bridge shortages caused
by snags in deliveries of low enriched uranium to power reactors.
(AP, 3/29/10)
2010 Mar 30, Russia's Pres.
Medvedev signed an order formally implementing UN Security
Council-approved sanctions against North Korea. The sanctions were
passed in June by the Security Council, which includes Russia.
(AP, 3/30/10)
2010 Mar 31, In southern Russia
2 suicide bombers, including one impersonating a police of-ficer,
killed 12 people in Dagestan. PM Vladimir Putin said the blasts may
have been organized by the same militants who attacked the Moscow
subway. Russian police broke up anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and
St. Petersburg, detaining dozens of demonstrators who had defied
bans in holding the rallies.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Dagestan 2
suicide bombers struck near the border with Chechnya, killing 12
people.
(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Apr 1, An explosion near
Dagestan's border with Chechnya killed two suspected mili-tants.
(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Apr 2, The Russian
Kommersant newspaper reported that Dzhanet Abdurakhmanova (17) of
Dagestan, a widow of a slain Islamist rebel, was one of the two
female suicide bombers who attacked Moscow's subway on March 31. Her
husband, Umalat Magomedov, was de-scribed as an Islamist militant
leader killed by government forces in December. The paper said the
2nd subway bomber has been has been tentatively identified as Markha
Ustarkhanova (20) from Chechnya, the widow of a militant
leader killed last October while he was preparing to as-sassinate
Chechen Pres. Ramzan Kadyrov. The 2nd female was later identified as
Maryam Sharipova (28), a teacher from Dagestan.
(AP, 4/2/10)(AP, 4/6/10)
2010 Apr 2, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin made his first visit to Venezuela. Pres. Chavez,
ahead of the visit, said Russia has offered to help Venezuela set up
its own space industry, including a satellite launch site. Officials
planned to sign new agreements for energy projects in Venezuela, as
well as industrial, commercial and agriculture projects. Putin also
planned to hold talks with Bolivian President Evo Morales.
(AP, 4/2/10)
2010 Apr 2, In southern
Kazakhstan a Russian rocket carrying 2 Russian and one American
astronauts blasted off, kicking off a tightly packed schedule at the
International Space Station in the coming days.
(AP, 4/2/10)
2010 Apr 3, In Dagestan 3
militants there opened fire on police in a drive-by shooting,
killing one and injuring another.
(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Apr 4, A US-Russian space
team sent their Easter greetings down to Earth after their Soyuz
spacecraft docked flawlessly at the International Space Station. The
rotating calendars of the Christian West and the Christian East
agreed on the same date for Easter.
(AP, 4/4/10)(Econ, 4/3/10, p.85)
2010 Apr 5, PM Vladimir Putin
said Russia may sell $5 billion worth of weapons to Venezuela
following his visit to the South American nation.
(AP, 4/5/10)
2010 Apr 5, In Russia’s
Ingushetia region a suicide bomber killed two policemen.
(Reuters, 4/5/10)
2010 Apr 6, Russia's foreign
minister, Sergey Lavrov, said the new US-Russian arms control treaty
is a much better deal for Russia than its predecessor, but Moscow
reserves the right to withdraw from it if a planned US missile
defense system grows into a threat.
(AP, 4/6/10)
2010 Apr 8, President Barack
Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the biggest
nuclear arms pact in a generation and envisioned a day when they can
compromise on the divisive issue of missile defense. Obama and
Medvedev warned Iran of possible sanctions over its nuclear program
shortly after signing the disarmament deal in Prague.
(AP, 4/8/10)(AFP, 4/8/10)
2010 Apr 8, The European Space
Agency launched CryoSat 2 on a Russian rocket from the Baikonur
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The satellite was designed to measure the
effects of climate change on the Earth’s polar ice caps.
(SFC, 4/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 9, In Ingushetia a
female suicide bomber killed herself after shooting dead a
po-liceman in Ekazhevo. 3 other militants were killed in
Ekazhevo in gunfights with police.
(Reuters, 4/9/10)
2010 Apr 10, Polish President
Lech Kaczynski (60) and some of the country's highest military and
civilian leaders died when the presidential plane crashed as it came
in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia, killing 97. The
26-year-old Tupolev was taking the president, his wife and staff to
events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre in Katyn forest
of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police. On board
were the army chief of staff, the navy chief commander, and heads of
the air and land forces. Also killed were the national bank
president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the
National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, Olympic
Committee head, civil rights commissioner and at least two
presidential aides and three lawmakers.
(AP, 4/10/10)
2010 Apr 12, In Russia Eduard
Chuvashov, a judge of Moscow's City Court, was found shot to death
in the stairwell of his apartment building. He was the judge in
several high-profile cases, including the February sentencing of 9
skinhead gang members who killed 6 non-Slavs.
(AP, 4/12/10)
2010 Apr 14, In Argentina
Dmitry Medvedev used the first-ever visit by a Russian president to
Argentina to urge the countries to boost economic ties and cooperate
more on nuclear energy.
(AP, 4/15/10)
2010 Apr 15, Russia’s Foreign
Ministry said Russia has suspended all adoptions to US fami-lies
until the two countries can agree on procedures, a week after an
American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia on a
plane by himself.
(AP, 4/15/10)
2010 Apr 15, German authorities
said they have targeted nine suspects, including former staff of
Hewlett-Packard, in a probe into whether the world's top PC maker
paid bribes to win busi-ness in Russia.
(Reuters, 4/15/10)
2010 Apr 21, The presidents of
Ukraine and Russia agreed to extend the stay of Russia's Black Sea
Fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol to 2042 after the existing
lease expires in 2017. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that
Kiev will receive large discounts on gas shipments in return for
certainty over the base's future, $100 for every 1,000 cubic meters
of gas or 30 percent if the benchmark price falls below $330.
(AP, 4/21/10)(SFC, 4/22/10, p.A2)
2010 Apr 21, In the Philippines
an electrical fire forced a cargo plane's pilots to attempt an
emergency landing in a Philippine rice field when the Russian-made
Antonov-12 aircraft burst into flames, killing three of its six
crew. The dead included two Russian ground engineers and a
Bulgarian.
(AP, 4/22/10)
2010 Apr 23, In Russia two-time
Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion Natalia Lavrova (25) was killed
with her sister in a car accident. Lavrova was Russia's only
rhythmic gymnast to win two Olympic gold medals, in team
competitions at the Sydney and Athens Olympics in 2000 and 2004.
(AP, 4/23/10)
2010 Apr 24, A Russian Proton
rocket carrying a US AMC 49 telecommunications satellite was
launched into orbit from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
(AFP, 4/25/10)
2010 Apr 28, Dunkin' Donuts
said it is returning to Russia, following an 11-year absence, with
plans to tap growing appetite for coffee and sweets by opening up to
20 outlets in Moscow this year.
(AP, 4/28/10)
2010 Apr 30, In Russia Vera
Trifonova (53), who was reported to have diabetes and chronic kidney
failure, died in the Matrosskaya Tishina jail. Trifonova, the head
of a real estate com-pany, had been jailed since December on fraud
charges. The next day Pres. Medvedev ordered investigators to
determine why another person has died in the same Moscow jail where
lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died last year of an untreated illness.
(AP, 5/1/10)
2010 May 1, Hundreds of Russian
opposition activists rallied in Moscow, shouting slogans comparing
PM Vladimir Putin to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a rare protest
approved by the authorities.
(AP, 5/1/10)
2010 May 5, Somali pirates
hijacked the China-bound oil tanker MV Moscow University 350 miles
off the coast of Yemen with 23 Russian crew and crude oil worth $52
million on board.
(Reuters, 5/5/10)
2010 May 6, Russian forces
freed a hijacked Russian oil tanker and rescued its crew in a
helicopter-backed operation that killed a Somali pirate.
Investigators said the 10 captured pi-rates, who seized the
China-bound MV Moscow University in the Gulf of Aden, will be
brought to Moscow for prosecution.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)
2010 May 7, Russia’s Defense
Ministry said the pirates seized by a Russian warship off the coast
of Somalia have been released because of "imperfections" in
international law, a claim that sparked skepticism, and even
suspicion the pirates might have been killed.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 7, Russia's parliament
defeated a motion that would have prevented Americans from adopting
Russian children.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 8, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev turned over scores of volumes from an in-vestigation
into the Katyn massacre to his Polish counterpart, a move
underlining Moscow's new willingness to repair long-troubled
relations with Warsaw.
(AP, 5/8/10)
2010 May 8, In western Siberia
2 explosions tore through the Raspadskaya mine just before midnight,
killing at least 66 workers and injuring 41 others. A further 24
people remained trapped in the mine, Russia's largest underground
coal mine, including rescue workers.
(AP, 5/9/10)(AP, 5/10/10)(AP, 5/11/10)(AP,
5/12/10)(AP, 5/13/10)
2010 May 11, Russia's Pres.
Medvedev said that Israeli-Arab tensions threaten to draw the Middle
East into a new catastrophe, as he added Moscow's weight to a
diplomatic push to ease antagonism between Israel and Syria. While
in Syria, Medvedev unnerved Israel by paying a visit to Khaled
Meshaal, the exiled leader of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.
(AP, 5/11/10)(AP, 5/14/10)
2010 May 12, Turkey and Russia
signed agreements for the construction of Turkey's first nu-clear
power plant and the development of a pipeline project to carry
Russian oil from the Black Sea, through Turkey to the Mediterranean.
(AP, 5/12/10)
2010 May 13, In Dagestan 5
repairmen on their way to fix a cell phone tower in the southern
province of Russia were killed in an explosion and subsequent gun
attack.
(AP, 5/13/10)
2010 May 14, Russia’s Itar-Tass
news agency quoted a senior Russian arms trader as saying Russia has
signed deals with Syria under which it will sell it warplanes,
anti-tank weapons and air defense systems. Federal Service for
Military-Technical Cooperation chief Mikhail Dmitriyev said Russia
will sell MiG-29 fighter jets, Pantsyr short-range air defense
systems and armored vehicles. He didn't give any numbers or provide
any further details.
(Reuters, 5/14/10)(AP, 5/15/10)
2010 May 17, Russian Pres.
Medvedev visited Kiev, Ukraine, and oversaw the signing of sev-eral
cooperation deals with the new Moscow-friendly leadership of Pres.
Viktor Yanukovych.
(SFC, 5/18/10, p.A2)
2010 May 18, The boss of
Russia's Raspadskaya mine quit after PM Vladimir Putin assailed him
over explosions that killed 66 people and could be prosecuted
following a safety probe into the tragedy.
(Reuters, 5/18/10)
2010 May 19, NATO and Russia
said they will boost efforts to develop a joint system to pro-tect
their troops from attack by short-range missiles.
(AP, 5/19/10)
2010 May 25, In southern Turkey
a bus carrying Russian tourists skidded off a highway and fell off a
bridge, killing 16 people and injuring 25 others.
(AP, 5/25/10)
2010 May 26, In southern Russia
an explosion tore through the center of Stavropol killing 5 people
and wounding at least 20 as locals gathered for a Chechen dance
concert.
(SFC, 5/27/10, p.A2)
2010 May 28, Konstantin
Yaroshenko (41) was arrested in Monrovia, Liberia's capital, by US
agents for alleged drug smuggling, and then extradited to New York.
On July 21 the Russian Foreign Ministry accused the US of
"kidnapping" the Russian pilot.
(AP, 7/21/10)
2010 May 29, In Russia 2 Gay
Pride parades were held without arrests in Moscow, the first time
the notoriously intolerant Russian authorities have not intervened
since the inaugural at-tempt to hold the event in the capital in
2006.
(AP, 5/29/10)
2010 May 29, In Russia DDT rock
star Yuri Shevchuk engaged PM Putin during a televised meeting to
promote a charity concert for children. Shevchuk called for anti
government protests to be allowed and accused police of serving
“their bosses and their pockets, not the people.” Putin said
“People’s rights to express their disapproval should be protected.”
(SFC, 6/1/10, p.A6)
2010 Jun 3, In Russia a male
crew of three Russians, a Frenchman, an Italian-Colombian and a
Chinese began a 520-day experiment in a windowless capsule, to
simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration
phase and 240 days return trip.
(AP, 6/2/10)
2010 Jun 5, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev called for a global fund to fight ecological
catastrophes like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, as he sought to
burnish his credentials as a green leader.
(AP, 6/5/10)
2010 Jun 5, Germany and Russia
declared that the five world powers negotiating with Iran support a
fresh set of international sanctions, and Chancellor Angela Merkel
said they could pass soon.
(AP, 6/5/10)
2010 Jun 6, Russia urged NATO
forces in Afghanistan to crack down harder on drug produc-tion and
smuggling, and offered to help put a security ring around the
country.
(AP, 6/6/10)
2010 Jun 8, A Russian source
close to Security Council talks told reporters that UN sanctions
against Iran over its nuclear program have been "completely agreed
upon."
(Reuters, 6/8/10)
2010 Jun 9, The US, Russia and
France dismissed a proposal by Iran to swap some of its en-riched
uranium for reactor fuel hours before an expected UN Security
Council vote on new sanctions. The UN Security Council endorsed a
4th round of sanctions against Iran.
(AP, 6/9/10)(Econ, 6/2/10, p.15)
2010 Jun 9, Russia said it had
captured Ali Taziyev, from Ingushetia province, an insurgent
ringleader responsible for hundreds of deaths in the troubled North
Caucasus region, where the Kremlin is struggling to contain an
Islamist insurgency.
(Reuters, 6/9/10)
2010 Jun 8, In Russia 4
soldiers were charged with stealing bank cards belonging to an
offi-cial who died in the April 10 crash that killed Poland’s Pres.
Lech Kaczynski and 95 others.
(SFC, 6/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Jun 10, Iran said it will
review relations with the UN nuclear watchdog a day after the UN
Security Council approved a fourth round of sanctions against Tehran
over its disputed nuclear program. Russia looked set to freeze the
sale to Tehran of S300 air defense missiles in re-sponse to new UN
sanctions on Iran.
(AP, 6/10/10)(AFP, 6/10/10)
2010 Jun 11, Russia signaled it
was scrapping the controversial sale of S-300 missiles to Iran in a
major shift the Kremlin said was needed after fresh UN sanctions
over Tehran's nuclear program.
(AFP, 6/11/10)
2010 Jun 16, In Russia’s North
Caucasus region 4 policemen were killed and 3 wounded in the Kostek
village in the province of Dagestan during a siege that left five
militants dead. In a separate incident, four gunmen were killed
after they refused police orders to pull over and opened fire on the
officers. Two police died in further attacks, one in Dagestan and
another in the nearby Kabardino-Balkaria province.
(AP, 6/16/10)
2010 Jun 16, In Kazakhstan 2 US
and a Russian crewmate blasted off for the int’l. space sta-tion in
a Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft. A woman in the US crew doubled the ISS
female crew to an all time high.
(SFC, 6/16/10, p.A2)(SFC, 6/18/10, p.A10)
2010 Jun 17, Russia's
children's rights ombudsman said Russian and US negotiators have
agreed to set up licensed adoption agencies and allow monitors to
visit the homes of adopted children as part of a new accord.
(AP, 6/17/10)
2010 Jun 17, Russia PM Putin
agreed to support a $1 billion joint US-Russian venture to drill for
oil in the Black Sea. San Ramon, Ca., based Chevron and Russia’s
state-owned Rosneft signed the agreement to develop the Val Shatsky
deposit, which could contain up to 860 million tons of crude.
(SFC, 6/18/10, p.D3)
2010 Jun 21, Russia started
cutting most natural gas supplies to ex-Soviet neighbor Belarus over
what it claims is a debt of nearly $200 million, threatening to
rekindle political disputes in the region over energy policy.
(AP, 6/21/10)
2010 Jun 22, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev arrived in California, where he planned to have dinner in
San Francisco with Gov. Schwarzenegger. A tour of Silicon Valley was
scheduled for the next day along with a speech at Stanford Univ.
(SFC, 6/22/10, p.D1)
2010 Jun 22, Belarussian
President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the shutdown of transit of
Russian gas to Europe, escalating a new "gas war" after Moscow
slashed supplies to Minsk in a debt dispute. Belarus said Gazprom
owes it 217 million dollars in transit fees.
(AFP, 6/22/10)
2010 Jun 23, Lithuania said its
Russian gas supplies, which transit through Belarus, had been cut by
30 percent as a result of Russia's energy dispute with Belarus.
(AP, 6/23/10)
2010 Jun 24, President Barack
Obama hosted Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the White House.
They appeared to get along like a couple of buddies.
(AP, 6/24/10)
2010 Jun 25, Russian fisheries
official Boris Simonov, suspected of accepting bribes, tossed 10
million rubles ($322,000) from his car after a police chase and a
crash on a busy Moscow highway. Simonov's boss, Roman Postnikov, who
oversaw two Moscow rivers, was arrested on suspicion of forging a
contract that allowed a fishing firm operate without the proper
documents.
(Reuters, 6/28/10)
2010 Jun 28, The FBI announced
the arrests of 10 alleged deep cover Russian agents after tracking
the suspects for years. They were accused of attempting to
infiltrate US policymaking circles while posing as ordinary
citizens. All 10 were charged with conspiracy to act as an agent of
a foreign government without notifying the US attorney general. The
offense carries a maxi-mum penalty of five years in prison. An 11th
person allegedly involved in the Russian spy ring was arrested
the next day in Cyprus.
(AP, 6/29/10)
2010 Jun 29, In Cyprus the
alleged paymaster of a Russian spy ring was arrested on an In-terpol
warrant while trying to board a flight to Budapest, Hungary, two
days after his 10 alleged co-conspirators were arrested in the
United States. His companion, a beautiful younger woman, was allowed
to fly out. The suspect, who called himself Christopher Metsos,
vanished after handing over a Canadian passport that claimed he was
54 and got released on bail.
(AP, 7/11/10)
2010 Jul 2, An unmanned Russian
space capsule carrying supplies to the International Space Station
failed in a docking attempt. The Progress space capsule was carrying
more than two tons of food, water and other supplies for the
orbiting laboratory. NASA said the failure was due to an antenna
problem. Space station commander Alexander Skvortsov reported the
Progress was "rotating uncontrollably" as it neared the space
station. The capsule docked successfully with the ISS on July 4.
(AP, 7/2/10)(SFC, 7/5/10, p.A2)
2010 Jul 4, Russia’s NTV, a TV
channel controlled by Gazprom, aired “Godfather,” a docu-mentary
that portrayed Belarus Pres. Lukashenka as a brutal
election-rigging, opposition-repressing tyrant.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.53)
2010 Jul 5, Belarus signed a
customs union with Russia and Kazakhstan.
(Econ, 7/24/10, p.53)
2010 Jul 9, The US and Russia
orchestrated the largest spy swap since the Cold War, ex-changing 10
spies arrested in the US for four convicted in Russia in a tightly
choreographed diplomatic dance at Vienna's airport.
(AP, 7/9/10)
2010 Jul 12, Two Russian
curators who angered the Russian Orthodox Church with an exhibi-tion
that included images of Jesus Christ portrayed as Mickey Mouse and
Vladimir Lenin were convicted of inciting religious hatred and
fined, but not sentenced to prison.
(AP, 7/12/10)
2010 Jul 13, A US law
enforcement official said the FBI's investigation into a Russian spy
ring that operated in the United States has resulted in another
Russian being detained, and he soon will be deported.
(Reuters, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 13, German government
sources said industrial group Siemens has won a major contract from
Russian Railways to be signed during a visit by Chancellor Angela
Merkel this week. The 2.2-billion-euro (2.8-billion-dollar) sale of
regional trains is the second major coup for Siemens in Russia this
year.
(AFP, 7/13/10)
2010 Jul 15, German Chancellor
Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met for talks
and are expected to oversee the signing of an array of deals between
German and Russian companies worth billions of dollars.
(AP, 7/15/10)
2010 Jul 15, A last-minute deal
at a meeting of the Kimberley Process certification scheme in Russia
authorized Zimbabwe to sell two batches of diamonds under strict
monitoring and regu-lation through Sept. 1.
(AP, 7/16/10)
2010 Jul 19, The upper house of
Russia's parliament passed a bill (121-1) granting expanded powers
to the country's main security agency, a move that critics say
echoes the era of the So-viet KGB. The bill would allow the Federal
Security Service to issue warnings to people sus-pected of preparing
to commit crimes against Russia's security.
(AP, 7/19/10)
2010 Jul 19, In Russia the
Khamovniki District Court in Moscow said in a statement it has
convicted Tariel Oniani (58) on extortion and abduction charges. The
native of Georgia had been convicted seven times and is wanted in
Spain since 2005 on money laundering charges.
(AP, 7/20/10)
2010 Jul 21, In southern Russia
2 carloads of assailants attacked a hydroelectric station, kill-ing
two workers and setting off bombs in Kabardino-Balkariya.
(AP, 7/21/10)
2010 Jul 24, Russia said it
plans its biggest sell-off of state assets since the early 1990s as
it seeks to raise over $29 billion to plug budget gaps over the next
three years.
(Reuters, 7/24/10)
2010 Jul 24, In southern Russia
gunmen opened fire on security guards at a provincial food market in
the city of Samara, killing at least two and wounding at least five
other people. 3 sol-diers in Dagestan were killed when assailants
attacked their convoy in a drive-by shooting.
(AP, 7/24/10)
2010 Jul 27, In central Russia
a Tver city court sentenced Dmitry Orlov (22), a neo-Nazi leader, to
life in jail and imprisoned 13 others for four hate killings and
multiple assaults.
(AP, 7/27/10)
2010 Jul 27, Iran vowed to
press ahead with its nuclear program even as it expressed readi-ness
to resume talks on the thorny issue despite being slapped with tough
new EU sanctions. Russia condemned new EU sanctions on Iran,
tempering hopes of closer cooperation between Moscow and the West
over Iran's nuclear program.
(AFP, 7/27/10)(Reuters, 7/27/10)
2010 Jul 28, In Russia a band
of 100 masked people staged a violent environmental protest in a
quiet Moscow suburb, hurling Molotov cocktails and fireworks at city
hall while objecting to plans for clearing a local forest for
highway construction.
(AP, 7/29/10)
2010 Jul 29, Russia’s President
Dmitry Medvedev signed a new security law which restored Soviet-era
powers to the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB's main
successor agency, a move that rights advocates fear could be used to
stifle protests and intimidate the Kremlin's po-litical opponents.
(AP, 7/29/10)
2010 Jul 30, In Russia the
Nashi movement, a Kremlin-backed youth organization, welcomed the
resignation of Ella Pamfilova, President Dmitry Medvedev's human
rights adviser. The group had threatened her with a libel suit for
her harsh criticism. The Russian opposition has claimed Nashi
activists have assaulted and intimidated its leaders.
(AP, 7/30/10)
2010 Jul 30, Forest fires swept
across central Russia, killing at least 25 people and forcing the
evacuation of thousands during the hottest summer since records
began 130 years ago.
(AP, 7/30/10)
2010 Jul 31, Russian police
arrested a leading Kremlin opponent and dozens of fellow activ-ists
at a demonstration demanding freedom of assembly.
(AP, 7/31/10)
2010 Jul 31, In Russia raging
wildfires spread across parts of western Russia, engulfing 30
percent more land in just 24 hours. PM Vladimir Putin described the
situation as very difficult.
(AP, 7/31/10)
2010 Aug 1, In Russia hundreds
of new fires broke out in forests and fields that have been dried to
a crisp by drought and record heat.
(AP, 8/1/10)
2010 Aug 2, Russia declared a
state of emergency in seven regions after wildfires killed at least
34 people and left thousands homeless in the worst heatwave since
records began 130 years ago. Officials said wildfires were also
destroying what was left of wheat crops, decimated by severe
drought. Expectations of slashed exports sent wheat prices soaring.
(AP, 8/2/10)(SFC, 8/3/10, p.A2)
2010 Aug 3, Russia's
Emergencies Minister Sergei Shoigu said some of the devastating
wild-fires sweeping western Russia are out of control. PM Putin said
he would personally supervise the reconstruction of fire-ravaged
homes via video cameras to be installed at each construction site.
(AP, 8/3/10)
2010 Aug 3, In northern Siberia
a twin-engine Antonov-24 turboprop passenger plane crashed near
Igarka, killing at least 11 of the 15 people on board.
(AP, 8/3/10)
2010 Aug 4, Moscow was engulfed
by the thickest blanket of smog yet this summer, an acrid, choking
haze from wildfires that have wiped out Russian forests, villages
and a military base.
(AP, 8/4/10)
2010 Aug 5, In Russia wildfires
were raging close to a shelter housing hundreds of dogs and retired
circus animals, as the death toll from weeks of blazes across the
country rose to 50.
(AP, 8/5/10)
2010 Aug 6, In Russia a choking
smog from raging wildfires shrouded Moscow, grounding flights,
plunging the city's iconic Red Square into a sea of dirty mist and
stinging eyes and throats across the Russian capital.
(AP, 8/6/10)
2010 Aug 9, A top Russian
health official said deaths in Moscow have doubled to an average of
700 people a day as the city is engulfed by poisonous smog from
wildfires and a sweltering heat wave. Some 830 forest fires were
burning nationwide.
(AP, 8/9/10)(SFC, 8/9/10, p.A2)
2010 Aug 11, Russia said it has
deployed high-precision air defense missiles in the break-away
Georgian region of Abkhazia, sending a defiant signal to Tblisi and
the West two years af-ter a war with Georgia.
(Reuters, 8/11/10)
2010 Aug 12, President Dmitry
Medvedev said drought has destroyed a quarter of Russia's grain crop
this year, pushing some farmers to the brink of bankruptcy and
hurting Russia's bid to expand food exports.
(Reuters, 8/12/10)
2010 Aug 14, In Russia the
number of wildfires in the Moscow region fell sharply overnight, but
hundreds of blazes continued to rage in other areas of Russia, and
officials warned that some of them are in hard-to-reach regions. At
least 53 people were killed in the fires.
(AP, 8/14/10)(Econ, 8/14/10, p.39)
2010 Aug 16, Russia’s ruling
party said it would not re-nominate Georgy Boos, the unpopular
governor of Kaliningrad, for a new term.
(Reuters, 8/16/10)
2010 Aug 16, In Russia Gabriel
Grecu, first secretary in the political department of the Roma-nian
Embassy in Moscow, was detained while trying to obtain secret
military information from a Russian citizen. He was given 48 hours
to leave the country.
(AP, 8/16/10)
2010 Aug 17, In southern Russia
a vehicle exploded outside a cafe, injuring at least 15 people in
downtown Pyatigorsk, a city in Russia's North Caucasus. A suicide
bomb attack earlier in the day in North Ossetia killed one police
officer.
(AP, 8/17/10)(Reuters, 8/17/10)
2010 Aug 17, A Russian
scientist said several thousand Muscovites are thought to have died
in July alone from this year's unprecedented heatwave and August
could add more fatalities to the grim statistics.
(Reuters, 8/17/10)
2010 Aug 18, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev offered Pakistan support in dealing with
catastrophic floods as he hosted the leaders of Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Tajikistan for talks on efforts to stabilize the
region.
(AP, 8/18/10)
2010 Aug 20, Russia secured a
long-term foothold in the energy-rich and unstable Caucasus region
by signing a deal with Armenia that allows a Russian military base
to operate until 2044 in exchange for a promise of new weaponry and
fresh security guarantees.
(AP, 8/20/10)
2010 Aug 21, In Russia
Madomedali Vagabov, the man suspected of organizing suicide bombings
that killed 40 people on the Moscow subway in March, was killed in a
shootout with Russian security forces. The National Antiterrorism
Committee told Russian news agencies that Vagabov was effectively
second in command in the separatist insurgency in Russia's
moun-tainous North Caucasus region.
(AP, 8/21/10)
2010 Aug 21, Hundreds of
residents of Kaliningrad, Russia's Baltic exclave, gathered on a
central square to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin's government.
(AP, 8/21/10)
2010 Aug 21, Iranian and
Russian engineers began loading fuel into Iran's first nuclear power
plant, which Moscow has promised to safeguard to prevent material at
the site from being used in any potential weapons production.
(AP, 8/21/10)
2010 Aug 22, In Dagestan a
Russian border guard was found killed and another who disap-peared
with him remained missing.
(AP, 8/23/10)
2010 Aug 23, In Dagestan at
least 3 people were wounded in other attacks, while four sus-pected
militants died when explosives they were transporting by car
unexpectedly blew up.
(AP, 8/23/10)
2010 Aug 27, In Russia 9
suspected militants were killed in two separate shootouts with
police in the Kabardino-Balkariya republic. Separately 5 suspected
militants and a police officer were killed in another shootout in
the republic of Dagestan.
(AP, 8/28/10)
2010 Aug 29, In Russia scores
of skinheads attacked a crowd of some 3,000 people at a rock concert
in Miass. State new reported one girl (14) was killed.
(SFC, 8/30/10, p.A2)
2010 Aug 30, Russia's PM
Vladimir Putin hinted he would return to the presidency in 2012 for
six more years and said democracy protesters marching without
permission deserved to be beaten.
(Reuters, 8/30/10)
2010 Aug 30, In Russia a fire
killed nine people at a nursing home in Vishny Volochek, 120 miles
(200 km) north of Moscow, and investigators say it apparently
started when an elderly resident doused himself in gasoline and set
himself on fire.
(AP, 8/30/10)
2010 Aug 31, Russian police
detained Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov and several other people at a
protest in Moscow in defense of the right to free assembly, which
activists say is restricted by the Russian government.
(Reuters, 8/31/10)
2010 Sep 3, Russia’s
Emergencies Ministry said 8 people have been killed and 400 houses
set ablaze in the latest wave of the forest fires plaguing the
country. The fires were most in-tense in the Volgograd region, where
380 houses were burned in 20 populated areas. In Sara-tov, 20 houses
burned.
(AP, 9/3/10)
2010 Sep 5, In Dagestan a
suicide car-bomber killed 3 soldiers and wounded 32 others in an
attack on a Russian military base. In Kabardino-Balkariya, another
republic of the Caucasus re-gion that includes Dagestan, a policeman
was shot to death by a man whom he'd stopped for a document check.
(AP, 9/5/10)
2010 Sep 9, In Russia's North
Caucasus a suicide car bomber hit the Vladikavkaz central market,
North Ossetia, killing 19 people and wounding more than 130 people
in one of the worst attacks in the volatile region in years. On Oct
12 Federal Security Service chief Alexander Bortnikov said 3
organizers were arrested in late September in Ingushetia. He said
two other suspects were killed by security forces.
(AP, 9/9/10)(Reuters, 9/10/10)(AP, 10/12/10)
2010 Sep 10, In Dagestan,
Russia, clashes between police and alleged militants left six more
people dead in the volatile North Caucasus. A police officer was
gunned down on the outskirts of the regional capital, Makhachkala.
(AP, 9/10/10)(AP, 9/11/10)
2010 Sep 10, In Ingushetia a
policeman was killed. The gunmen shot and killed him outside an auto
repair shop in the region's main city of Nazran.
(AP, 9/11/10)
2010 Sep 12, An Egyptian
security official said 16 Russians and Moldovans, who killed an
Egyptian smuggler, have handed themselves over to police. Some of
the would-be migrants to Israel attacked and fatally stabbed
smuggler Massud Salim (31) after he attempted to rape one of the
female members of the group.
(AFP, 9/12/10)
2010 Sep 15, Russia and Norway
ended a 40-year dispute in signing an Arctic border treaty which
opens the door to offshore oil and gas exploration. President Dmitry
Medvedev and Nor-way's PM Jens Stoltenberg presided over the signing
in Murmansk.
(AP, 9/15/10)
2010 Sep 16, Some of Russia's
prominent opposition leaders have formed a coalition to chal-lenge
the rule of President Dmitry Medvedev and PM Vladimir Putin. Former
deputy premier Boris Nemtsov said the coalition aims to compete in
next year's parliamentary elections and field a presidential
candidate in 2012.
(AP, 9/16/10)
2010 Sep 16, In Poland Akhmed
Zakayev (51), a senior Chechen separatist wanted in Russia for
alleged murder, kidnapping and terrorism, was arrested in Warsaw
where he was to attend a conference organized by the World Chechen
Congress. Zakayev, who lives in Britain, was apprehended "without
any trouble" on an international warrant issued by Russia. Zakayev
was released the next day.
(AP, 9/17/10)(AP, 9/18/10)
2010 Sep 19, Moscow mayor Yuri
Luzhkov (74) left the country for what his spokesman said was a
holiday in Austria, amid growing speculation that he could be
dismissed from one of Rus-sia's most powerful jobs. Luzhkov and his
billionaire property mogul wife Yelena Baturina were viewed as
having fallen out of favor.
(Reuters, 9/19/10)
2010 Sep 21, The UN’s World
Health Organization (WHO) said 40 young Europeans are murdered every
day, with Russia, Albania and Kazakhstan having the highest homicide
rates for people aged 10-29.
(AP, 9/21/10)
2010 Sep 22, Russian news
agencies reported that Russia has dropped plans to supply Iran with
S-300 missiles because they are subject to international sanctions.
(AFP, 9/22/10)
2010 Sep 23, Russia turned over
to Poland 20 new files from a probe into the 1940 Katyn massacre
that could be key in proving that Soviet secret police carefully
planned the killing of thousands of Poles.
(AP, 9/23/10)
2010 Sep 25, A Russian Soyuz
space capsule landed in Kazakhstan returning 3 astronauts from a
6-month mission to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SSFC, 9/26/10, p.A5)
2010 Sep 28, Russia's Pres.
Medvedev fired defiant Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, ousting the man
who gave the crumbling capital a modern facelift but was maligned
for his wife's hold on construction projects and for staying on
vacation while forest fires choked his city. Luzhkov's deputy,
Vladimir Resin, was named acting mayor pending the appointment of a
successor.
(AP, 9/28/10)
2010 Sep 29, A Russian firm
announced an ambitious bid to fill the vacuum in the space tour-ism
market by stationing an orbiting hotel in the cosmos. Orbital
Technologies wants to launch a seven-room station by 2016 but may
increase or decrease that capacity based on customer demand.
(AP, 9/29/10)
2010 Oct 1, Moscow police
detained several gay rights opponents at the first sanctioned gay
rights protest in years. Former Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, fired on Sep 28,
had compared gay people to the devil and forbade gay rights rallies.
(SFC, 10/2/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 4, In Russia Yuri
Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow who was fired by Pres. Medvedev,
said in a published interview that he plans to form his own
political movement.
(AP, 10/4/10)
2010 Oct 4, Russia's VimpelCom
Ltd and Weather Investments, the investment company headed by
Egyptian telecom mogul Naguib Sawiris, said they are merging to form
what would become the world's fifth largest mobile telecommunication
service provider in a deal valued at over $6.5 billion. Under the
agreement VimpelCom, which is Russia's second largest mobile phone
service provider, would own via Weather 51.7 percent of Egypt's
Orascom Telecom and all of Italy's Wind Telecomunicazioni SpA, both
of which are headed by Sawiris.
(AP, 10/5/10)
2010 Oct 6, Russia’s President
Dmitry Medvedev headed a top level business delegation to Algeria,
seeking to use his clout to push through delicate energy and
telecoms deals with a tra-ditional Moscow ally. Algeria and Russia
signed six deals in sectors including energy and trans-portation.
(AFP, 10/6/10)(AP, 10/6/10)
2010 Oct 6, A Moscow court said
is has sentenced 3 ultranationalists, convicted of hate kill-ings
and bombings, to long prison sentences. The were part of a militant
neo-pagan cult that preyed on labor migrants from Central Asia and
the Caucasus. From 2008-2009 they killed 10 people and arranged a
number of bombings.
(SFC, 10/7/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 7, Russian
Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov told reporters that Russia is
reim-bursing Iran for its down payments on a deal for advanced S-300
ground-to-air missiles, which Moscow halted in the face of tough new
UN sanctions.
(AFP, 10/7/10)
2010 Oct 7, In Kazakhstan a
Russian Soyuz TMA-01M rocket blasted off for the Int’l. Space
Station carrying one American and 2 Russian astronauts.
(SFC, 10/8/10, p.A2)
2010 Oct 11, Russia's ruling
party swept regional elections in several provinces this weekend,
easily maintaining its grip on power, according to early returns.
(AP, 10/11/10)
2010 Oct 11, Russian
researchers said traces of a previously unknown Bronze Age
civilization have been discovered in the peaks of the Caucasus
Mountains thanks to aerial photographs taken 40 years ago. the
civilization dated from the 16th to the 14th centuries BC, high in
the mountains south of Kislovodsk.
(AP, 10/11/10)
2010 Oct 15, Russian PM
Vladimir Putin's chief of staff, Sergei Sobyanin, was nominated as
Moscow's next mayor, a move seen as bringing the capital's sizable
political and business in-terests under the direct control of the
Kremlin.
(AP, 10/15/10)
2010 Oct 15, Russia agreed to
help build Venezuela's first nuclear power plant and buy $1.6
billion of oil assets, reinforcing ties with President Hugo Chavez,
who shares Moscow's opposi-tion to US global dominance.
(Reuters, 10/15/10)
2010 Oct 16, Russia’s
state-owned RIA news agency reported that flooding in the southern
region of Krasnodar has killed 11 people with three missing.
(Reuters, 10/16/10)
2010 Oct 21, In Russia the
Moscow legislature voted to approve Sergei Sobyanin, PM
Putin’s chief of staff, as mayor of the city replacing Yuri Luzhkov,
who was fired by Pres. Medvedev last month after 18 years in office.
Luzhkov has said he believes the true reason behind his ouster was
the Kremlin's desire to have a more pliant mayor before
parliamentary elections next year and the 2012 presidential vote.
(AP, 10/21/10)
2010 Oct 28, In southern
Afghanistan a roadside bomb targeting the car of a district police
chief killed three police officers in Zabul province. Militants shot
and killed a government official in charge of the water supply in
Dand district of Kandahar province as he was walking near his home.
A NATO service member died following a bomb attack in southern
Afghanistan. In Khost province a NATO airstrike killed one insurgent
believed to be a senior leader of the Haqqani network. In
neighboring Mando Zayi district of Khost, one civilian was killed
and two others were wounded in fighting. US and Russian special
forces ended an operation raiding drug labs in an unprecedented
collaborative military operation, destroying what a Russian official
said was $250 million worth of heroin and morphine in Nangarhar
province. Months earlier Russia had provided US officials in Kabul
with the coordinates of 175 laboratories where heroin is proc-essed
but the US failed to act. A NATO helicopter killed more than 20
insurgents after it was fired on during an operation in
Afghanistan's restive Kandahar province.
(AP, 10/28/10)(AP, 10/29/10)
2010 Oct 30, A Russian unmanned
cargo ship manually docked with the International Space Station,
bringing 2.5 tons of food, water, oxygen and fuel for the orbiting
laboratory and its US-Russian crew.
(AP, 10/30/10)
2010 Nov 1, Russia's Pres.
Medvedev visited Kunashiri Island in the Pacific Ocean claimed by
both Russia and Japan, triggering immediate protests from Tokyo,
which is already involved in a heated dispute with China over
islands to the south.
(AP, 11/1/10)
2010 Nov 2, Russia said Pres.
Medvedev planned more trips to a group of islands seized by the
Soviet Union from Japan at the end of World War Two, deepening a
serious rift with Tokyo.
(Reuters, 11/2/10)
2010 Nov 3, Viktor Chernomyrdin
(72), former Russian prime minister (1992-1998), died. He served as
the country was throwing off communism and developing as a market
economy.
(AP, 11/3/10)
2010 Nov 4, In Russia on
National Unity Day a group of men armed with knives killed 12
peo-ple, including four children, who had gathered for a celebration
at a home in Kushchevskaya vil-lage. One of the children was
strangled and another died of smoke inhalation when the attack-ers
tried unsuccessfully to burn down the house. On Nov 15 prosecutors
said that they had ar-rested Sergei Tsapok, and a member of his
gang, Sergei Tsepovyaz. Four other suspects, in-cluding two
teenagers, were arrested a week earlier. The farmer who was killed
had refused to hand over some of his land.
(AP, 11/15/10)(Econ, 12/11/10, p.30)
2010 Nov 5, Georgia's
government announced the arrests of 13 people, including four
Rus-sian citizens, who are accused of spying for Russia's armed
forces. The arrests, which took place in October, were announced on
the day Russia's military intelligence agency celebrates its
professional holiday, Day of the Military Intelligence Officer.
(AP, 11/5/10)
2010 Nov 6, In Russia Oleg
Kashin (30), a reporter for the Kommersant newspaper, was left in a
coma after two men smashed his head, legs and fingers in an attack
that prosecutors be-lieve was linked to his work. Among his more
contentious reporting topics has been efforts by environmentalists
and opposition activists to protect trees in the Khimki forest near
Moscow from being cut down for a new highway.
(AP, 11/6/10)
2010 Nov 7, In Russia more than
1,000 military veterans and active servicemen rallied to de-mand the
ouster of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, a civilian who is
carrying out a radical reform of Russia's armed forces. Many of the
participants in the rally said they were angry that Serdyukov did
not want to see churches built on military bases.
(AP, 11/7/10)
2010 Nov 8, In Russia Anatoly
Adamchuk, a journalist who works for a suburban Moscow pa-per, was
beaten up by two unknown men. He had written about efforts to
protect forests around Moscow.
(AP, 11/8/10)
2010 Nov 10, In Russia Mikhail
Beketov, a muckraking reporter left handicapped by a 2008 beating,
was convicted of defaming an official he criticized when writing
about highway corrup-tion and the destruction of the Khimki forest
near Moscow. A symbolic fine was ordered.
(AP, 11/10/10)(Econ, 11/13/10, p.52)
2010 Nov 11, A Russian paper
said the head of Russia's deep cover US spying operations betrayed
the network and defected, potentially giving the West one of its
biggest intelligence coups since the end of the Cold War. Kommersant
named the man as Col. Shcherbakov and said he had left Russia days
before US authorities announced the spy ring arrests on June 28.
(Reuters, 11/11/10)
2010 Nov 13, Japan's PM Naoto
Kan strongly protested Russian Pres. Medvedev's Nov 1 visit to the
disputed island of Kunashiri and said in a meeting on the sidelines
of a Pacific Rim lead-ers' conference that the two nations must
build mutual trust. Pres. Obama attended the 2-day APEC summit in
Yokohama.
(AP, 11/13/10)(Econ, 11/13/10, p.48)
2010 Nov 15, In Switzerland
Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev (43) warned reporters not to
cover his divorce case as his wife Elena demanded $6 billion from
the man known as the “fertilizer king” for a fortune amassed in
potash mining. According to Forbes, he was the 60th richest person
in the world in 2008.
(SFC, 11/16/10, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/32lymtu)
2010 Nov 16, Viktor Bout (43),
a suspected Russian arms dealer dubbed the "Merchant of Death," was
flown out of Thailand to face trial in the United States following a
long legal battle and fierce opposition from Moscow.
(AFP, 11/16/10)
2010 Nov 20, NATO nations
meeting in Portugal formally agreed to start turning over
Af-ghanistan's security to its military next year and give them full
control by 2014. The US and its allies appeared to take conflicting
views on when NATO combat operations would end. NATO
Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said he did not expect NATO
troops to stay in the fight against the Taliban after 2014. Russia
was receptive but stopped short of accepting a his-toric NATO
invitation to join a missile shield protecting Europe against
Iranian attack.
(AP, 11/20/10)(Reuters, 11/20/10)
2010 Nov 21, A global tiger
summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, approved a wide-ranging
program with the goal of doubling the world's tiger population in
the wild by 2022 backed by governments of the 13 countries that
still have tiger populations: Bangladesh, Bhu-tan, Cambodia, China,
India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam
and Russia. Experts wild tigers could become extinct in 12 years if
countries where they still roam fail to take quick action to protect
their habitats and step up the fight against poaching.
(AP, 11/21/10)
2010 Nov 26, Russia said it
will miss an April, 2012, deadline for destroying all of its
chemical weapons, as officials inaugurated a major new plant to
dispose of them. Pochep, the latest of six plants built in Russia in
recent years, will process nearly 19 percent of Russia's stockpile,
or 7,500 tons of nerve agent used in aircraft-delivered munitions.
The US has acknowledged it will also miss the deadline.
(AP, 11/26/10)
2010 Dec 1, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin warned that his country will find it necessary to
build up its nuclear forces, if the United State's doesn't ratify a
new arms reduction treaty.
(AP, 12/1/10)
2010 Dec 2, Russia won the bid
to host the 2018 World Cup following a vote by FIFA's execu-tive
committee members.
(AFP, 12/2/10)
2010 Dec 2, PepsiCo agreed to
buy one of Russia's top drinks companies in a deal that would make
the US food giant a dominant force in the Russian market and extend
its reach deep into former Soviet lands. Pepsi announced that it
will buy 66% Wimm-Bill-Dann for $3.8 billion and launch a tender
offer for the rest of the company.
(AFP, 12/2/10)(Econ, 12/11/10, p.75)
2010 Dec 4, In Russia a
Dagestan Airlines passenger jet, carrying at least 155 people, made
an emergency landing at a snowy Moscow airport after its engines
failed. It skidded off the run-way and slammed into buildings,
killing two people and injuring around 40.
(AP, 12/4/10)
2010 Dec 5, Russian news
reported that a Proton rocket and its payload of three GLONASS-M
navigation satellites has fallen into the Pacific Ocean after
failing to reach orbit. They were to be part of Russia's satellite
navigation system competing with the U.S. Global Positioning Sys-tem
(GPS). The mishap eventually cost space chief Anatoly Perminov his
job.
(AP, 12/5/10)(AP, 8/18/11)
2010 Dec 5, Mike Hancock (64),
a member of the British House of Commons Defense Com-mittee, and the
European Security and Defense Assembly of the Western EU, said that
his Russian assistant, Katia Zatuliveter (25), is facing deportation
as a suspected spy.
(AP, 12/5/10)
2010 Dec 6, In Russia Yegor
Sviridov (28) was shot dead with rubber bullets during a fight in
northwest Moscow. A suspect arrested in the shooting was from
Kabardino-Balkaria in the Caucasus. Russian media later said
Sviridov was a member of the Spartak Ultras, a group linked to
soccer fan violence in the past. In Oct 2011 a jury at Moscow City
Court convicted Aslan Cherkesov of premeditated murder. The court's
Judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison. Five other people who
took part in the brawl were sentenced to five years in jail each for
hooliganism and inflicting light bodily injury.
(AP, 12/11/10)(SSFC, 12/12/10, p.A10)(AP,
10/28/11)
2010 Dec 7, Georgia said it has
arrested six people, all of them Georgian citizens, suspected of
being agents for Russia and accused them of staging a series of
explosions, including one outside the US Embassy in the capital.
(AP, 12/7/10)
2010 Dec 8, In Russia drug
control agencies from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia and Tajiki-stan
agreed to step up cooperation to stop the flow of drugs through
Afghan borders.
(AP, 12/8/10)
2010 Dec 13, Mikhail Prokhorov,
the Russian billionaire owner of the New Jersey Nets, intro-duced a
new line of hybrid cars — called "Yo" — that he hopes to begin
selling in 2012.
(AP, 12/13/10)
2010 Dec 16, Russian
cardiologist Ivan Khrenov told PM Putin during a live call-in show
that his bosses instructed doctors and nurses to show fake pay slips
and pose as recovering pa-tients surrounded by new equipment during
the premier's November visit to a hospital in the central town of
Ivanovo. Putin's visit to the hospital was nationally televised,
just like the call-in show where Khrenov made his claims.
(AP, 12/17/10)
2010 Dec 16, Astronauts from
the US, Russia and Italy blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft from
Kazakhstan on a mission to the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 12/16/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 17, North Korea said
it would strike again at the South if a live-firing drill by Seoul
on a disputed island went ahead, with an even stronger response than
last month's shelling that killed four people. Russia urged South
Korea to halt plans for the artillery drill.
(AP, 12/17/10)(Reuters, 12/17/10)
2010 Dec 18, Russian news
agencies said Moscow police have arrested 500 people to stop them
attending rival protests over the killing of a soccer fan and the
ethnic violence that erupted after the slaying. Seven hunters and
forest rangers were shot dead in a wooded area in the Caucasus
province of Kabardino-Balkaria.
(AP, 12/18/10)
2010 Dec 21, In India Russia’s
Pres. Medvedev clinched agreements with its Cold War-era ally to
deepen nuclear energy cooperation and develop a supersonic fighter
to rival a US jet. Russia and India pledged to share intelligence
and work together to fight international terror.
(Reuters, 12/21/10)(AP, 12/21/10)
2010 Dec 22, The UN nuclear
agency said tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste from a de-funct
Serbian reactor have been repatriated to Russia. The 2.5 metric tons
(2.76 tons) of the spent fuel arrived at a secure Russian facility
from Serbia's Vinca reactor.
(AP, 12/22/10)
2010 Dec 24, Russia's
parliament gave preliminary approval to a landmark nuclear arms
re-duction treaty with the United States, supporting ratification of
the new START pact in the first of three required votes.
(Reuters, 12/24/10)
2010 Dec 24, Russia's central
bank raised interest rates on its deposit operations to contain
surging inflation, its first step away from the loose policy
implemented after the financial crisis hammered the Russian economy.
(Reuters, 12/24/10)
2010 Dec 24, Russia announced a
deal to buy at least two of France’s advanced Mistral-class
amphibious warships. This was the first time in modern history that
Russia has made a major defense acquisition abroad.
(SFC, 12/25/10, p.A2)
2010 Dec 26, In Russia several
thousand people rallied in Moscow to protest the ethnic clashes that
have rocked Russia, holding posters reading "Fascists disgrace
Russia" and chanting "No to Fascism!"
(AP, 12/26/10)
2010 Dec 26, In Russia icy rain
shut down Moscow's largest airport for nearly 15 hours, coated roads
with ice and left more than 300,000 people and 14 hospitals without
electricity.
(AP, 12/26/10)
2010 Dec 27, In Russia jailed
ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was found guilty of money laundering
and theft of billions of dollars at a trial that has renewed doubts
about the Kremlin's commitment to the rule of law.
(Reuters, 12/27/10)
2010 Dec 28, A former Russian
senator was sentenced to life in jail for ordering multiple
kill-ings and financing a criminal group. The Moscow City Court said
that Igor Izmestyev, a former senator and oil trader from the
central region of Bashkiriya, financed a mob that killed 14 people
between 1992 and 2004. The court sentenced 4 more mobsters to up to
23 years in jail. Their so-called Kingisepp mob was known for
finishing their victims off with a shot in the eye.
(AP, 12/28/10)
2010 Dec 28, In Russia robbers
carrying assault rifles in a baby carriage fatally shot two guards
outside a commercial bank and a man walking his dog and got away
with more than $800,000 worth of cash in St. Petersburg.
(AP, 12/28/10)
2010 Dec 28, An aging Russian
military cargo plane crashed, killing all 12 people aboard. The
An-22 plane was on a flight from the southwestern region of Voronezh
region when it crashed in the Tula region, about 120 miles (190 km)
south of Moscow.
(AP, 12/29/10)
2010 Dec 29, A Russian a court
ordered 3 men to be them held in custody at least until the end of
the week. Investigators had arrested two men and Andrei Chernyshev,
a government of-ficial, who is believed to have ordered the November
attack and brutal beating of environmental activist Konstantin
Fetisov.
(AP, 12/29/10)
2010 Dec 30, Jailed Russian oil
tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to six more years in
prison following a trial seen as payback for his defiance of
Vladimir Putin.
(AP, 12/30/10)
2010 Dec 31, In Russia Boris
Nemtsov, a former deputy Russian prime minister during Boris
Yeltsin's presidency, was among 68 people arrested at an
unsanctioned rally in Moscow. He and other protesters had gathered
on the opposite side of a square from an authorized protest. On Jan
2 he was sentenced to 15 days in jail for failure to follow police
orders. Nemtsov was re-leased on Jan 15. A woman was killed on the
outskirts of Moscow, reportedly by a bomb that was to have been
deployed in the city's central Manezh Square where Muscovites throng
for holiday celebrations.
(AP, 1/3/11)(AP, 1/15/11)(AP, 2/3/11)
2010 Dec 31, In Russia 13
villages remained without power following a freezing rain that
caused trees and power lines to snap. Power was cut off to 789
villages and towns with a total of 400,000 inhabitants in the region
around Moscow.
(AP, 1/1/10)
2010 Thane Gustafson and Daniel
Yergin in 1994 authored "Russia 2010," their idea of where Russia
would be in 2010. Gustafson updated his ideas in 1999 with his book
"Capitalism Rus-sian-Style."
(WSJ, 1/5/00, p.A20)
2010 Thomas de Waal authored
“The Caucasus: An Introduction.”
(Econ, 10/23/10, p.102)
2011 Jan 1, A Russian passenger
jet carrying 124 people caught fire as it taxied down a snowy runway
and then exploded at a Siberian airport, killing three people and
injuring 43, in-cluding six who were badly burned.
(AP, 1/1/10)
2011 Jan 7, A Russia fishing
vessel with about a dozen on board went missing off Russia's Pacific
coast after sending a distress signal that it was sinking.
(AP, 1/7/11)
2011 Jan 14, BP and Russian
state-run firm Rosneft unveiled an agreement to swap shares and
launch a joint venture to exploit the Arctic's vast untouched energy
resources. BP’s share in Rosneft would increase to 10.8% and Rosneft
would get 5% of BP.
(AFP, 1/15/11)(Econ, 1/22/11, p.74)
2011 Jan 18, Palestinians
welcomed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to the West Bank.
Medvedev gave a political boost to the Palestinians, backing their
claim to east Jerusalem as a capital and their demand that Israel
must freeze all settlement construction before peace talks can
resume.
(AP, 1/18/11)
2011 Jan 21, Afghan leader
Hamid Karzai paid his first state visit to Russia amid political
mayhem at home that saw a delay in the seating of a new parliament
and renewed questions about his ability to lead the war-ravaged
state. A joint statement said Pres. Medvedev has gratefully accepted
Hamid Karzai's invitation to visit Afghanistan.
(AFP, 1/21/11)
2011 Jan 24, In Russia 37
people were killed and 180 injured in a suicide bombing at Mos-cow's
Domodedovo airport. An autopsy later showed "a huge amount of highly
potent narcotic and psychotropic substances in parts of the suicide
bomber's body." On Feb 6 unnamed offi-cials in the North Caucasus
region said they believed Magomed Yevloyev (20) of Ingushetia, was
the suicide bomber. On Feb 9 Itar-TASS reported that Yevloyev’s
brother Akhmed (16) and sister Fatima (22) have been arrested. Also
detained was Akhmed Aushev, a resident of the same village,
Ali-Yurt, Ingushetia. On March 29 Russian investigators charged Doku
Umarov, a Chechen warlord, and another militant with organizing the
airport bombing. Media reports said that Umarov might be among 17
militants killed in a security raid in the province of Ingushetia
west of Chechnya on March 28.
(Reuters, 1/24/11)(Reuters, 1/25/11)(AP,
1/29/11)(AP, 2/3/11)(Reuters, 2/6/11)(Reuters, 2/9/11)(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Jan 25, Russia's lower
house of parliament ratified a landmark nuclear arms pact with the
United States, virtually assuring passage of an agreement President
Barack Obama has described as the most significant arms control deal
in nearly two decades.
(AP, 1/25/11)
2011 Jan 26, Russia's upper
house of parliament unanimously ratified the New START nu-clear arms
pact with the United States.
(AP, 1/26/11)
2011 Jan 28, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev signed the ratification of a nuclear arms cut pact
with the US, the centerpiece of Pres. Obama's efforts to reset ties
with Moscow.
(AP, 1/28/11)
2011 Jan 30, An unmanned
Russian cargo spacecraft docked at the Int’l. Space Station
de-livering 2.6 tons of supplies to the US-Russian-Italian
crew.
(SFC, 1/31/11, p.A2)
2011 Jan 31, In Russia several
hundred people demonstrated on a central Moscow square to call for
the ouster of PM Vladimir Putin. The demonstrations are held on the
last day of every month with 31 days to call attention to the 31st
Article of Russia's Constitution, which guaran-tees freedom of
assembly.
(AP, 1/31/11)
2011 Feb 1, Russia’s President
Dmitry Medvedev unveiled a huge monument to his prede-cessor Boris
Yeltsin, praising him for leading Russia through its difficult first
years after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
(AP, 2/1/11)
2011 Feb 1, Ireland ordered a
Russian diplomat to be expelled, after an investigation con-cluded
that the country's intelligence service used stolen Irish identities
as cover for spies oper-ating in the United States.
(AP, 2/1/11)
2011 Feb 2, In southern Russia
2 masked gunmen burst into a cafe in Kabardino-Balkaria and shot
dead four traffic policemen on their lunch break. In Dagestan two
suspected insur-gents were killed in an overnight gunbattle with
police.
(AP, 2/2/11)
2011 Feb 4, Russian Defense
Minister Anatoly Serdyukov inspected military facilities on the
disputed southern Kuril islands also claimed by Japan, prompting a
sharp protest from Tokyo.
(AP, 2/4/11)
2011 Feb 5, The United States
and Russia formally inaugurated their new START nuclear arms treaty,
capping two years of work to "reset" the sometimes strained ties
between the for-mer Cold War enemies.
(Reuters, 2/5/11)
2011 Feb 7, RIA News reported
that a Russian man, Yevgeny Anikin (27), has pleaded guilty in court
to stealing $10 million from former Royal Bank of Scotland division
World Pay in 2008 by hacking into accounts. "I want to say that I
repent and fully admit my guilt," Anikin said in his final comments
to the court in Novosibirsk in Siberia, where he was charged with
theft.
(Reuters, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 7, Japan's PM Naoto
Kan led a large rally demanding the return of the southern Ku-ril
islands held by Russia since the end of World War II and calling the
recent visit there by Russia's president an outrage. Japan has
designated Feb. 7 as "Northern Territories Day," say-ing that a
treaty dating back to that day in 1855 supports its claim to the
islands.
(AP, 2/7/11)
2011 Feb 9, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev made it clear he will not give up the south-ern
Kuril islands to Japan. In fact, he said Russia will send more
weapons to the disputed is-lands to keep them secure.
(AP, 2/9/11)
2011 Feb 10, Russian
environmental activist Alla Chernysheva (35) was detained with her 2
daughters (3&6), the latest victim in a campaign to silence
opponents of a new Moscow-St. Pe-tersburg highway that is tearing up
the ancient Khimki forest. Authorities announced a March start date
for the highway. According to police Chernysheva was arrested on
suspicion of taking a fake bomb to a Feb. 1 protest rally.
(AP, 2/10/11)
2011 Feb 11, A top US diplomat
for arms control said Poland and other Eastern European countries
are expressing concern to the United States about an arsenal of
tactical nuclear weapons believed to be at their doorsteps in
Russia's Kaliningrad exclave.
(AP, 2/11/11)
2011 Feb 12, Russian police
detained Sergei Udaltsov, head of the anti-Kremlin Left Front group,
and 13 other activists during a rally in Moscow that drew hundreds
of protesters. A re-gional leader of the pro-Kremlin Just Russia
party was gunned down in the province of Ady-geya. Alexander Loboda
was sprayed with bullets from a passing car in the town of Maykop.
Two suspected Islamic militants were gunned down in Nazran, the
largest city in the province of Ingushetia. Dagestan police found
the body of a man apparently killed a day earlier by an im-provised
explosive device. The man was said to be an Islamic militant who
triggered the device by mistake in the Kyzyl-Yurt district.
(AP, 2/12/11)
2011 Feb 14, In Russia the
assistant to the judge, who convicted oil tycoon Mikhail
Khodork-ovsky on Dec 30, said the judge did not write the verdict
and read it against his will in the Mos-cow courtroom.
(AP, 2/14/11)
2011 Feb 17, Russian riot
police raided the offices of Inteko, a building company belonging to
Yelena Baturina, Russia’s richest woman and wife of former Moscow
Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. The raid was part of an investigation into the
alleged embezzlement of $444 million from the Bank of Moscow.
(SFC, 2/18/11, p.A3)
2011 Feb 17, Pope Benedict XVI
and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met at the Vatican, stressing
the need for better ties and the promotion of shared Christian
values.
(AP, 2/17/11)
2011 Feb 18, In Russia masked
gunmen shot dead three vacationers from the Moscow area on a road in
Kabardino-Balkaria in the violence-plagued North Caucasus region.
(AP, 2/19/11)
2011 Feb 18, Ford Motor Co.
said it plans to team up with a Russian automaker to make and
distribute cars in the country. The announcement came shortly after
Italian automaker Fiat SpA backed out of a potential partnership
with the same Russian company.
(AP, 2/18/11)
2011 Feb 21, In Russia former
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described Russia as an imita-tion of
democracy and accused its current rulers of conceit and contempt for
voters, in his harshest criticism of the government yet.
(AP, 2/21/11)
2011 Feb 25, The US returned to
Russia a trove of historic archive documents dating back to
Catherine the Great that were stolen after the Soviet breakup. Some
of the documents returned were stolen from archives in St.
Petersburg in the early 1990s. Russian authorities have ac-cused
Vladimir Feinberg, a Russian antiques dealer in Israel, of stealing
the documents and have been unsuccessful in obtaining his
extradition.
(AP, 2/25/11)
2011 Feb 26, Russia joined
other UN Security Council members in ordering an arms embargo
against Libya and other sanctions (Resolution 1970). Russia stood to
lose a total of up to $10 billion in arms sales, including almost $4
billion with Libya, from the wave of unrest currently de-stabilizing
regimes in north Africa and the Middle East. The UN Security Council
agreed to tell the prosecutor of the Int’l. Criminal Court (ICC) to
probe the Libyan crisis.
(AFP,
2/27/11)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council_Resolution_1970)
2011 Feb 26, In Russia a man,
apparently distraught after an argument with his wife, died af-ter
pulling the pin on a grenade and blowing himself up at the entrance
of a discount retail store in northeast Moscow.
(Reuters, 2/26/11)(SSFC, 2/27/11, p.A4)
2011 Mar 5, A mid-sized
Russian-built plane crashed during a training flight in Belgorod
prov-ince, killing all six people on board including two pilots from
Myanmar.
(Reuters, 3/5/11)
2011 Mar 5, Lawmakers in
Russia's Chechnya region handed strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov a
new five-year term, unanimously approving the Kremlin nominee in a
vote whose outcome was never in doubt.
(Reuters, 3/5/11)
2011 Mar 13, Russians from the
Bering Strait to the Baltic voted in regional elections, testing
Vladimir Putin's ruling party before December parliamentary polls
and a presidential vote next March. Russia's ruling party swept the
local elections.
(Reuters, 3/13/11)(AP, 3/14/11)
2011 Mar 16, NASA astronaut
Scott Kelly and two Russian cosmonauts landed safely in cen-tral
Kazakhstan after a five-month stint on the International Space
Station. They left behind Russian cosmonaut Dmitry Kondratyev,
Italy's Paolo Nespoli and NASA astronaut Catherine Coleman, who are
due to return to earth in about three months.
(AP, 3/16/11)
2011 Mar 28, In Russia at least
17 rebels and three law enforcement officers were killed in
Ingushetia. Authorities also detained two brothers in the security
raid on charges of helping stage the January 24 Domodedovo airport
bombing.
(Reuters, 3/28/11)(AP, 3/29/11)
2011 Mar 30, Russia’s Pres.
Medvedev ordered government ministers to vacate their seats on the
boards of state firms.
(Econ, 4/9/11, p.57)
2011 Apr 8, In Russia a cyber
attack paralyzed the website of a popular independent news-paper,
days after similar attacks knocked off Russia's most popular
blogging site.
(AP, 4/8/11)
2011 Apr 11, In San Francisco
the annual Goldman Environmental prize was awarded 6 peo-ple from
around the world. The winners included Hilton Kelly for his efforts
to cut pollution in Port Arthur, Texas; Francisco Pineda for
resisting mining in El Salvador; Ursula Sladek of Ger-many for
creating for reducing her community’s reliance on nuclear power;
Prigi Arisandi for her efforts to protect Indonesia’s Surabaya
River; Dmitry Lisitsyn for his efforts to protect the Rus-sia’s
Sakhalin island; and Raoul du Toit for defending wildlife in
Zimbabwe.
(SFC, 4/11/11, p.A12)
2011 Apr 14, Russia was
reported to have banned the hunting of polar bears this year, thanks
to a group with close ties to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, a
longtime defender of large endan-gered animals.
(AP, 4/14/11)
2011 Apr 17, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev became the first Kremlin chief to tour Hong Kong,
seeking fresh investment as aides and executives signaled a rise in
Russian listings in the city.
(AFP, 4/17/11)
2011 Apr 18, US investor
William Browder said a Moscow tax official, who approved a
fraudu-lent $230 million tax return in 2007, has bought luxury real
estate in Moscow, Dubai and Monte-negro and wired money through her
husband's bank accounts worth $39 million. Browder has been
campaigning against Russian corruption since 2009 when his lawyer,
Sergey Magnitsky, died a year after being sent to prison.
(AP, 4/18/11)
2011 May 3, Russia's domestic
intelligence agency said it had established the guilt of Alexan-der
Poteyev, a man Russian media have identified as the spymaster who
betrayed a ring of agents operating in the United States last year.
(Reuters, 5/3/11)
2011 May 3, The Church of
Scientology said Russia's Justice Ministry has dropped 29 books and
lectures by the movement's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, from its list of
extremist literature. They had been banned in late April after a
court in the Siberian city of Surgut found them "ex-tremist."
(AP, 5/3/11)
2011 May 6, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin proposed creating a "broad popular front" ahead of
Russia's parliamentary election, in an apparent attempt to counter
growing public discontent with his political party and solidify
support.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 8, In Dagestan a
Russian officer and three rebels were killed when police discov-ered
an encampment in the woods near Chechnya. Police reported that an
insurgent was killed and two others detained in an operation in the
city of Astrakhan in the Volga delta.
(AP, 5/8/11)
2011 May 12, Russia and
Pakistan pledged to boost economic ties and coordinate efforts to
fight terror as the Kremlin welcomed the Pakistani president for a
key visit after the killing of Osama bin Laden.
(AFP, 5/12/11)
2011 May 16, Russian
billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of the New Jersey Nets
basketball team, announced plans to lead Right Cause, a liberal
Russian political party with close ties to the Kremlin. Critics
referred to the party as fake opposition to help give Russia a
semblance of multiparty democracy.
(SFC, 5/17/11, p.A2)
2011 May 17, Doku Umarov,
leader of an Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus, posted an
interview saying Osama bin Laden's death would not stop violence and
hinted at more at-tacks, calling all of Russia a "battleground."
(Reuters, 5/17/11)
2011 May 21, Russia's oil
pipeline monopoly said it would appeal a court ruling ordering it to
release board meeting minutes, saying an anti-corruption blogger
wanted the information as part of a conspiracy against Russia.
(Reuters, 5/21/11)
2011 May 24, A Moscow appeals
court upheld the second conviction of oil magnate Mikhail
Khodorkovsky (47), but it also reduced his 14-year prison sentence
by one year.
(AP, 5/24/11)
2011 May 27, NATO reported that
Moamer Kadhafi's forces had laid landmines in Misrata. Russia joined
the call of Western powers for Kadhafi to step down as G8 leaders
met in France.
(AFP, 5/27/11)
2011 May 28, Moscow police
arrested more than 30 people trying to hold two unauthorized
gay-rights demonstrations in the capital.
(AP, 5/28/11)
2011 May 30, Russia banned the
import of all vegetables from Germany and Spain and warned the
sanction could soon be applied to the rest of Europe because of the
deadly E. coli bacteria scare. German officials suspect the deadly
strain, which has already killed 12 people, may have come from
organic cucumbers imported from Spain.
(AFP, 5/30/11)
2011 May 31, Russian officials
said the suspected triggerman in the 2006 killing of journalist Anna
Politkovskaya has been arrested. Rustam Makhmudov, was arrested in
Chechnya and would be transferred to Moscow.
(AP, 5/31/11)
2011 May 31, Europe's human
rights court ruled that Russia was guilty of violations in its
jail-ing of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but found no
firm proof that the case was politi-cally motivated.
(Reuters, 5/31/11)
2011 Jun 3, In Russia fire tore
through an ammunition depot in the central region of Udmurtia,
causing shells to explode all day. More than 28,000 people were
evacuated from their homes. Interfax news said that 106 of the
arsenal's 152 buildings were destroyed.
(AP, 6/3/11)
2011 Jun 7, A Russian Soyuz
spacecraft took off from Kazakhstan, bound for the Interna-tional
Space Station. In the three-man crew were Russian cosmonaut Sergei
Volkov, American astronaut Michael Fossum, and Japanese astronaut
Satoshi Furukawa of Japan's JAXA space agency. The trio will spend
six months on the space station.
(AP, 6/7/11)(Reuters, 6/7/11)
2011 Jun 7, The EU imposed
sanctions on 6 ports still held by Colonel Qaddafi. Russian
President Dmitri Medvedev sent an envoy to Libya for the first time
to meet with rebel leaders in the city of Benghazi and promise
support. At least 40 NATO strikes hit Tripoli as Khadafy spoke in an
audio address and vowed never to surrender.
(Econ, 6/18/11, p.53)(AFP, 6/7/11)(SFC, 6/8/11,
p.A4)
2011 Jun 9, Russian officials
said a wave of wildfires this year have already torched 1.48
mil-lion acres of mainly Siberian forests and left 3 fire fighters
dead.
(SFC, 6/10/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 10, In Russia
disgraced army Col. Yuri Budanov was gunned down in central Mos-cow.
He had been convicted to 10 years in prison for kidnapping and
strangling Heda Kun-gayeva (18), a Chechen girl, in 2000, but was
released on parole in 2009.
(SFC, 6/11/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 20, In northwestern
Russia a TU-134 passenger jet slammed into the ground and caught
fire while trying to land on a foggy night at Petrozavodsk, killing
44 people and leaving eight survivors badly hurt. 3 more victim died
days later bringing the death toll to 47. Russian authorities later
reported that the navigator was in a state of “light alcoholic
intoxication.”
(Reuters, 6/21/11)(AP, 6/22/11)(AP, 6/26/11)(SFC,
9/20/11, p.A2)
2011 Jun 22, Russia denied
registration to the People's Freedom Party, a new political party
created by three prominent opposition leaders, effectively barring
them from participating in up-coming parliamentary and presidential
elections.
(AP, 6/22/11)
2011 Jun 22, Russia and the EU
signed a deal agreeing conditions for the resumption of EU fresh
vegetable imports to Russia, which banned them because of a deadly
E.coli outbreak.
(Reuters, 6/22/11)
2011 Jun 23, Russia’s PM Putin
said his government would not revoke a ban on European vegetable
imports until Brussels met Kremlin conditions.
(SFC, 6/24/11, p.A4)
2011 Jun 23, In Russia
Vladislav Achalov (65), a former Soviet general who supported two
botched anti-Kremlin coups and recently organized a protest against
the government's military reform, died in Moscow. Achalov supported
the 1991 hardline coup that briefly ousted Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev but didn't face trial. In October 1993, he played an
active role in a rebellion against President Boris Yeltsin and spent
several months in custody before being re-leased under amnesty.
(AP, 6/23/11)
2011 Jun 25, Russian tycoon and
New Jersey Nets basketball team owner Mikhail Prokhorov was
confirmed as the new head of a Kremlin-friendly political party.
(AP, 6/25/11)
2011 Jun 25, Russian police
detained 14 gay rights activists trying to hold an unsanctioned
demonstration in St. Petersburg, as well as one person suspected of
attacking the protesters.
(AP, 6/25/11)
2011 Jun 27, In Russia Col.
Alexander Poteyev, a former senior Russian intelligence officer, was
convicted in absentia of betraying a ring of 10 Russian spies in the
United States. Poteyev had reportedly fled to Belarus and then on to
Germany and, finally, the United States using a passport belonging
to another person.
(AP, 6/27/11)
2011 Jun 30, Russian officials
said a court in a Moscow suburb banned works by the founder of the
Church of Scientology. A court in the Siberian city of Surgut had
earlier made a similar decision, but then overturned it. The
decision did not yet taken effect due to a still-pending ap-peal by
the Scientologists.
(AP, 6/30/11)(AP, 1/8/12)
2011 Jul 2, Russia restored
power to Belarus after a 4-day cutoff due to unpaid bills.
(SSFC, 7/3/11, p.A5)
2011 Jul 10, In Russia a
55-year-old double-decker boat, called Bulgaria, sank on the Volga
River in the Tatarstan region, killing at least 100 people with 29
missing. A total of 208 people are believed to have sailed on the
boat. Officials said it was overloaded when it sank.
(AP, 7/10/11)(AP, 7/11/11)(AP, 7/13/11)
2011 Jul 11, Russia's
Investigative Committee said a Tangara airline plane carrying 33
people crashed as it tried to make an emergency landing on the Ob
river in Siberia, killing five people.
(AP, 7/11/11)
2011 Jul 14, The Canadian head
of the NATO mission over Libya said Gaddafi has ordered his troops
to blow up refineries and other facilities if they have to retreat.
Russia’s special envoy to Libya told the Izvestia newspaper that
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi has a "suicidal plan" to blow up the
capital Tripoli if it is taken by rebels.
(Reuters, 7/14/11)(AFP, 7/14/11)
2011 Jul 31, Russian police
detained dozens of antigovernment activists in Moscow and St.
Petersburg. Opposition leaders have called for demonstrations on the
last day of every month with 31 days in reference to the 31st
Article of the Russian Constitution, which guarantees free-dom of
assembly.
(SFC, 8/1/11, p.A2)
2011 Jul 31, In Russia an
overloaded motor boat crashed into the docked Oka barge on the
Moscow River in pre-dawn darkness, killing nine of the 16 people on
board.
(AP, 7/31/11)
2011 Aug 17, Iran's foreign
minister Ali Akbar Salehi, speaking in Russia, said Iran is ready to
resume negotiations on its nuclear program and a Russian proposal
will aid the process.
(AP, 8/17/11)
2011 Aug 18, Russia lost
contact with its Express-AM4 communications satellite shortly after
its launch, the latest in a series of failures that has dogged the
nation's space program. Failure of the upper stage, the Briz-M,
resulted in the loss of communications.
(AP, 8/18/11)
2011 Aug 18, The chief of
Russia's state arms trader Rosoboronexport, Anatoly Isaikin, said
Moscow will keep supplying combat jets and other military gear to
Syria under contracts totaling about $3.5 billion (euro2.43
billion).
(AP, 8/19/11)
2011 Aug 19, Russia's Foreign
Ministry cautioned the West against encouraging the Syrian
opposition, and said it doesn't support Western calls for President
Bashar Assad to resign.
(AP, 8/19/11)
2011 Aug 19, Russia and North
Korea both announced that Moscow will provide food assis-tance,
including some 50,000 tons of wheat, to Pyongyang. North Korea might
face another food crisis this year due to heavy rains.
(AP, 8/20/11)
2011 Aug 20, Reclusive North
Korea's autocratic leader Kim Jong Il crossed into Russia on his
armored train to discuss with President Dmitry Medvedev the possible
renewal of nuclear disarmament talks and the construction of a
pipeline that will stream Russian natural gas to both Koreas.
(AP, 8/20/11)
2011 Aug 22, Russian military
officers flew to North Korea for talks about renewing military ties
as North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's armored train rolled through
the resource-rich far east of Russia on his secretive journey to a
summit with President Dmitry Medvedev.
(AP, 8/22/11)
2011 Aug 23, Russian
investigators arrested Lt. Col. Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov, a retired
police officer, on suspicion of organizing the 2006 killing of
journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down in the elevator
of her Moscow apartment building.
(AP, 8/23/11)
2011 Aug 23, In southern Russia
an explosion of old ammunition at the Ashuluk military base in the
Astrakhan region killed six soldiers and wounded 12.
(AP, 8/23/11)
2011 Aug 24, North Korean
leader Kim Jong Il met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near
Lake Baikal. A spokesman for Medvedev said North Korea is ready to
impose a morato-rium on nuclear missile tests if international talks
on its nuclear program resume.
(AP, 8/24/11)
2011 Aug 24, A Russian unmanned
supply spaceship, launched from the Baikonur cos-modrome in
Kazakhstan, crashed and exploded in a forested area in Siberia. It
was the 44th launch of a Progress supply ship to the int’l. space
station, and the first failure in the nearly 13-year life of the
complex.
(AP, 8/25/11)
2011 Aug 31, Russian bailiffs
raided the offices of BP in Moscow to uncover documents over its
failed deal with Rosneft. The search came less than a day after
Rosneft and ExxonMobil agreed to a stunning Arctic exploration deal
overseen by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
(AFP, 8/31/11)
2011 Sep 1, Russia recognized
Libya's rebels as the governing authority in the country.
(AFP, 9/1/11)
2011 Sep 3, In Tajikistan
leaders from eight former Soviet states (Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Ka-zakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan)
gathered to celebrate endur-ing cooperation over the two decades
since their nations collectively gained independence, but mutual
acrimony and recriminations cast a shadow over the event.
(AP, 9/3/11)
2011 Sep 7, A Russian Yak-42
jet carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team crashed while
taking off near the city of Yaroslavl, killing 43 of 45 people. One
of the 2 survivors died on Sep 12. Flight crew member Alexander
Sizov remained in intensive care at Moscow's Skli-fosovsky hospital.
The Kontinental Hockey League included 24 teams from Russia,
Belarus, Kazakhstan, Latvia and Slovakia.
(AP, 9/7/11)(AP, 9/10/11)(AP, 9/12/11)
2011 Sep 9, Syria's opposition
leaders said they expected more support from Russia after the
Russian upper house of parliament's foreign affairs chief Mikhail
Margelov met a visiting Syrian delegation that included National
Organization for Human Rights in Syria head Ammar Qurabi.
(AFP, 9/9/11)
2011 Sep 12, In Syria raids
around Hama began after security forces cut all roads leading to the
area along with electricity and telephone lines. Security forces
shot dead 17 people and ar-rested more than 60 around Hama. 3 others
were reported killed in Douma and Al Rastan. Russia’s President
Dmitry Medvedev defended the Russian position for “open direct
talks” in talks in Moscow with British PM David Cameron even as the
Syrian security forces pressed their deadly crackdown on dissent.
(AP, 9/12/11)(AFP, 9/13/11)
2011 Sep 15, Russian tycoon
Mikhail Prokhorov (46) abandoned his efforts to build up the Right
Cause political party and enter parliament, saying he was unwilling
to tolerate interference from the Kremlin. He also lambasted
Vladislav Surkov, the Kremlin's seldom-glimpsed political
strategist.
(AP, 9/15/11)
2011 Sep 22, In Dagestan 2
early morning car bombs killed a Russian policeman and wounded 60
other people in the capital of Makhachkala. A few hours before the
car bombs, four suspected Islamic insurgents died when explosives
they were carrying in their car detonated on a capital street.
(AP, 9/22/11)
2011 Sep 24, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin (58) declared he planned to reclaim the presidency at
March elections that could open the way for the former KGB spy to
rule until 2024.
(Reuters, 9/24/11)
2011 Sep 26, Russia’s
influential finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, was forced out after a
televi-sion confrontation with Pres. Dmitri Medvedev.
(SFC, 9/27/11, p.A2)
2011 Sep 29, British police and
medical regulators said Russian gangs and their Chinese as-sociates
are making billions of dollars from selling fake and unlicensed
medicines over the Internet, putting thousands of people at risk.
More than 2.5 million doses of counterfeit, con-trolled and
withdrawn drugs were seized across 79 countries in seven days of
raids coordinated by international police organization Interpol
under an operation codenamed Pangea that ended on Sep 27.
(Reuters, 9/29/11)
2011 Sep, Two professors of a
military academy in St. Petersburg were charged with espio-nage for
allegedly selling Russian military secrets to China.
(AP, 10/6/11)
2011 Oct 4, China and Russia
vetoed a UN Security Council resolution threatening action against
Syria's deadly crackdown on protests.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 5, Russia's
intelligence service said it has detained an alleged Chinese spy who
tried to obtain designs of an advanced missile system as part of
Beijing's efforts to update its weaponry. Prosecutors submitted the
case to the Moscow City Court today, although the man was detained
late last October.
(AP, 10/5/11)
2011 Oct 7, Syrian security
forces opened fire at protesters in several parts of the country,
killing at least eight people and wounding scores. Leading
opposition figure Riad Seif was beaten up by pro-government gunmen
and rushed to a hospital in Damascus. Russia’s Pres. Dmitry Medvedev
told Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad to either reform or resign. In
Qamishli Mashaal Tammo, a prominent and charismatic Kurdish
opposition figure, was gunned down by masked gunmen.
(AP, 10/7/11)(AP, 10/8/11)
2011 Oct 15, Russian opposition
activist Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front move-ment was
sent back to jail after visiting a hospital where he was denied
proper medical atten-tion. Udaltsov was on the 3rd day of a
hunger strike and fell ill in a courtroom where he was ap-pealing a
10-day jail sentence for disobeying police orders.
(AP, 10/16/11)
2011 Oct 21, Russia's
parliament adopted a law limiting abortions but rejected even
tougher restrictions backed by the country's conservative Orthodox
Church. The country's birth rate has become a serious concern for
Russia as it fights to stem a steep population decline.
(AP, 10/21/11)
2011 Oct 21, A Russian rocket
launched the first 2 satellites of the EU’s Galileo navigation
system from French Guiana, in an ambitious bid to rival the American
GPS network.
(SFC, 10/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Oct 22, Russia’s Foreign
Ministry said in a statement it was blacklisting unspecified US
officials it claims were involved in the abductions of alleged
terrorism suspects, the torture of inmates at Guantanamo prison, the
killings of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the abduc-tions
or abuse of Russians in the United States. The action was in
response to the US State Department's decision in July to ban entry
to dozens of unidentified Russian officials allegedly involved in
the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.
(AP, 10/22/11)
2011 Oct 26, Russian newspaper
journalist Igor Karmazin, working on a report about the op-position
in Belarus, said he was deported overnight from the authoritarian
ex-Soviet nation by the secret police. Lukashenko said that his
government has learned the lessons of the Arab Spring uprisings and
knows how to deal with protests organized through social networks.
(AP, 10/26/11)
2011 Oct 30, An unmanned
Russian cargo ship headed for the Int’l. Space Station after it
launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
(SFC, 10/31/11, p.A2)
2011 Nov 2, Bangladesh and
Russia signed a deal to build a nuclear power plant in the
en-ergy-starved South Asian nation.
(AP, 11/2/11)
2011 Nov 2, Transparency
Int’l., a Berlin-based campaigning group, published an update of its
2008 Bribe Payers Index. Russia and China scored worst. The index
ranked 28 countries accounting for 80% of global trade and
investment.
{Germany, Corruption, Russia, China}
(Econ, 11/5/11, p.72)
2011 Nov 4, In Russia thousands
of far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis marched through Moscow to
call for ethnic Russians to "take back" Russia, as resentment grows
over dark-complexioned Muslim migrants from Russia's Caucasus and
the money the Kremlin sends to those restive regions.
(AP, 11/4/11)
2011 Nov 4, In Russia an
international crew of researchers walked out of a set of windowless
modules in Moscow after a grueling 520-day simulation of a flight to
Mars. The all-male crew consisted of three Russians, a Frenchman, an
Italian-Colombian and a Chinese.
(AP, 11/4/11)
2011 Nov 7, Russia's Interior
Ministry said police have arrested Anatoly Moskvin (45) of Niz-hny
Novgorod. Police said he had kept 29 mummified bodies at his
apartment and dressed them up like dolls. The man reportedly had
only selected the remains of young women for his grisly collection.
(AP, 11/7/11)(SFC, 11/8/11, p.A2)
2011 Nov 9, A Russian space
probe aiming to land on a Mars moon was stuck circling the Earth
after equipment failure. Scientists raced to fire up its engines
before the whole thing came crashing down. The unmanned
Phobos-Ground craft was successfully launched by a Ze-nit-2 booster
rocket just after midnight. On Dec 2 the European Space Agency said
it had abandoned efforts to contact the probe.
(AP, 11/9/11)(SFC, 12/3/11, p.A2)
2011 Nov 14, Two Russians and
an American blasted off from Kazakhstan to the ISS orbiting
laboratory on a Soyuz-FG rocket, Russia's first manned mission since
the failed launch of the unmanned Progress supply ship in August
temporarily grounded its Soyuz rockets.
(AFP, 11/14/11)
2011 Nov 21, Vitaly Shlykov
(77), a former Soviet intelligence agent who spent years in a Swiss
prison (1983-1986) after being convicted of espionage, died in
Moscow. After his retire-ment two years later, he became a prominent
scholar specializing in military policy and wrote extensively on
security issues.
(AP, 11/21/11)
2011 Nov 21, A Russian Soyuz
capsule with 3 astronauts returned from the Int’l. Space Sta-tion
landed in Kazakhstan after spending 165 days in space.
(SFC, 11/22/11, p.A2)
2011 Nov 23, President Dmitry
Medvedev said Russia will deploy new missiles aimed at US missile
defense sites in Europe if Washington goes ahead with the planned
shield despite Rus-sia's concerns. The stern warning to the US and
NATO seemed to be directed at rallying na-tionalist votes in the
polls.
(AP, 11/23/11)
2011 Nov 29, President Dmitry
Medvedev officially commissioned a new military early warning radar
in the Kaliningrad region, saying it shows Russia's readiness to
respond to US missile de-fense plans.
(AP, 11/29/11)
2011 Dec 1, Russian prosecutors
launched a probe against Golos, the country's main inde-pendent
election watchdog, on suspicion of election law violations — just
three days before the national parliamentary vote. It has recorded
more than 4,500 complaints related to the Dec 4 election, most
involving the dominant United Russia party.
(AP, 12/1/11)
2011 Dec 2, A Russian court
found Golos, the country’s only independent election watchdog,
guilty of violations, casting doubt on its ability to monitor the
Dec 4 parliamentary election as voters complain of record violations
by the Kremlin party.
(AP, 12/2/11)
2011 Dec 4, Russians cast their
ballots with muted enthusiasm in parliamentary elections. Several
parties complained of extensive election violations aimed at
boosting the vote count of United Russia, the party of PM Vladimir
Putin. An election official later described how he had manipulated
the vote at his polling station to give Putin's party the desired 65
percent, when in fact it had won no more than 25 percent.
(AP, 12/4/11)(AP, 3/4/12)
2011 Dec 5, In Russia PM
Vladimir Putin's party saw its majority in parliament weaken
sharply, according to preliminary election results. International
observers pointed to procedural violations and serious indications
of ballot stuffing after a campaign slanted in favor of United
Russia. Only seven parties were allowed to field candidates for
parliament this year, while the most vocal opposition groups were
barred from the race.
(AP, 12/5/11)
2011 Dec 7, Former Soviet
leader Mikhail Gorbachev said Russian authorities should annul the
results of the parliamentary vote and hold a new one, as popular
indignation grew over widespread allegations of election fraud.
Thousands of Russians have rallied in Moscow and St. Petersburg in
the last two days, facing off against tens of thousands of police
and Interior Minis-try troops. Popular anger boiled over into a 3rd
straight night of protests with scores arrested in Moscow and St.
Petersburg.
(AP, 12/7/11)(SFC, 12/8/11, p.A5)
2011 Dec 9, In China two
exchange students accepted the Confucius Peace Prize on behalf of
Russian PM Vladimir Putin, who was honored for enhancing Russia's
status and crushing anti-government forces in Chechnya.
(AP, 12/9/11)
2011 Dec 10, Tens of thousands
of Muscovites thronged to a square across the river from the Kremlin
to protest alleged electoral fraud and urge an end to PM Vladimir
Putin's rule, demands repeated at other rallies across this vast
country in the largest public show of discontent in post-Soviet
Russia.
(AP, 12/10/11)
2011 Dec 11, Russian President
Dmitry Medvedev posted a comment on his Facebook page saying he has
ordered a probe into the allegations of electoral fraud during the
Dec. 4 parlia-mentary vote.
(AP, 12/11/11)
2011 Dec 12, Mikhail Prokhorov
(46), one of Russia's richest tycoons and the owner of the New
Jersey Nets basketball team, said he will run against PM Vladimir
Putin in the March presidential election. Prokhorov made his
fortune, estimated by Forbes at $18 billion, in metals and banking.
(AP, 12/12/11)
2011 Dec 13, A convoy of 25
Russian trucks was stopped by US soldiers guarding the Kos-ovo
border with Serbia, increasing tensions in the volatile region.
Peacekeepers said the con-voy's cargo consisting of canned food,
blankets, tents and power generators looked to be in-tended for
those manning the roadblocks, and not for the general Kosovo Serb
population. EU officials in Kosovo said the Russians can pass if
they allow an international police escort. Three EU police vehicles
escorted the convoy on Dec 16 after taking a roundabout way through
Ser-bia to bypass roadblocks.
(AP, 12/14/11)(AP, 12/17/11)
2011 Dec 14, In Russia a
loyalist to PM Vladimir Putin who served as the speaker of
parlia-ment resigned in a move that appeared to be part of the
government's effort to stem public an-ger over alleged fraud in this
month's parliamentary election.
(AP, 12/14/11)
2011 Dec 14, In Russia Boris
Chertok (99), a rocket designer who played a key role in
engi-neering Soviet-era space programs, died in Moscow. He was
closely involved in putting the world's first satellite in orbit on
Oct. 4, 1957, and preparing the first human flight to space by Yuri
Gagarin on April, 12 1961.
(AP, 12/14/11)
2011 Dec 15, Khadzhimurad
Kamalov (46), the founder of a newspaper critical of authorities in
the restive province of Dagestan in Russia's North Caucasus, died
after he was gunned down in a hail of bullets outside his office.
Kamalov founded the independent weekly paper Chernovik (Rough Draft)
in 2003 and remained its publisher until his killing.
(AP, 12/16/11)
2011 Dec 16, Russia gained
approval to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Formal
membership was expected in early 2012.
(SFC, 12/17/11, p.A4)
2011 Dec 17, In Russia about
1,000 demonstrators demanding a rerun of parliamentary elec-tions
gathered in central Moscow for a second weekend of protests against
the recent fraud-tainted vote.
(AP, 12/17/11)
2011 Dec 18, In Russia
thousands took to the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg, braving
strong winds and torrential rains for a second week of protests over
the recent fraud-tainted parliamentary vote.
(AP, 12/18/11)
2011 Dec 18, Russia’s Kolskaya
oil drilling platform capsized and later sank amid fierce storms off
the coast of Sakhalin Island, plunging dozens of workers into the
churning, icy wa-ters. Of the 67 men aboard, 14 were plucked alive
immediately after the accident.
(AP, 12/18/11)(AP, 12/19/11)
2011 Dec 18, Iranian state
media reported that Russia’s Tatneft has signed a preliminary
ac-cord valued at $1 billion with the Persian Gulf country to
develop the Zagheh oil field located in southwestern Iran. The next
day Tatneft said no accord has been signed.
(SFC, 12/18/11, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/7j78scn)
2011 Dec 20, The European Court
of Human Rights ordered Russia to pay more than €1 mil-lion ($1.3
million) to dozens of plaintiffs over the country's bungled efforts
to end a 2002 Mos-cow theater siege by Chechen militants.
(AP, 12/20/11)
2011 Dec 23, A Russian Soyuz
spacecraft arrived at the Int’l. Space Station delivering a
Rus-sian, an American and a Dutchman, restoring the permanent crew
to six.
(SFC, 12/24/11, p.A2)
2011 Dec 24, In Russia an
estimated 80,000 demonstrators cheered opposition leaders and jeered
the Kremlin in the biggest show of outrage yet against PM Vladimir
Putin's 12-year rule.
(AP, 12/24/11)(Econ, 12/31/11, p.36)
2011 Dec 25, Prominent Russian
opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front, had
barely half an hour of freedom before being sentenced to 10 more
days in jail, making it the 14th time this year he's been detained.
(AP, 12/25/11)
2011 Dec 25, Russian and
Japanese rescue vessels and a helicopter searched for five people
missing in a fierce storm off Russia's east coast after a
Cambodia-flagged fishing ship, the Ginga, sank early in the day. 3
bodies were recovered from the icy waters of the La Perouse Strait,
between the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan.
(AP, 12/25/11)
2011 Russia’s population was
about 140 million.
(Econ, 9/17/11, p.49)
2012 Jan 6, In Russia a former
Cabinet member close to PM Vladimir Putin called for a rerun of the
country's fraud-tinged parliamentary elections, an apparent bid to
soothe public outrage as Putin seeks to reclaim the presidency.
(AP, 1/6/12)
2012 Jan 9, In Russia a gas
explosion and fire at the Il Pittore restaurant in Moscow killed two
people and injured at least 26. The explosion was believed to have
been caused by improper use of gas canisters.
(AP, 1/9/12)
2012 Jan 12, Russia’s PM
Vladimir Putin promised that his government will become more
ac-countable to the Russian people if he wins a third presidential
term in March as he laid out his priorities for the future on a
campaign website.
(AP, 1/12/12)
2012 Jan 12, Turkish officials
said a Russian ship, allegedly carrying tons of weapons, made a dash
for Syria after Cypriot officials allowed it to leave their waters.
The Chariot was ferrying cargo owned by Russia's state arms trader
Rosoboronexport.
(AP, 1/12/12)
2012 Jan 14, Russian police
detained two officials of a liberal opposition party after a protest
rally in Moscow against election fraud. The rally by the Yabloko
party was sanctioned for 300 participants, but police counted about
350.
(AP, 1/14/12)
2012 Jan 15, A failed $170
million Russian space probe, Phobos-Ground, crashed into the
southern Pacific, 770 miles off the southern coast of Chile.
(SFC, 1/16/12, p.A2)
2012 Jan 23, Russia's business
daily Kommersant reported that Moscow has signed a con-tract to sell
36 Yak-130 combat jets to Syria, a deal that, if confirmed, would
openly defy inter-national efforts to pressure Assad's regime.
(AP, 1/23/12)
2012 Jan 23, Indian navy
personnel took command of the country's first nuclear-powered
submarine in two decades after collecting the vessel near the
Russian port of Vladivostok. India decommissioned its last
Soviet-built vessel in 1991.
(AFP, 1/22/12)
2012 Jan 24, Russia's elections
commission said prominent opposition leader Grigory Yav-linsky will
be disqualified from running for president in March, after finding
that hundreds of thousands of the signatures submitted on his
nominating petition were invalid. The move would prevent his liberal
Yabloko party from fielding observers. His party had fielded
thousands of election observers in the December election who
documented evidence of fraud in favor of Putin's United Russia
party.
(AP, 1/24/12)
2012 Jan 25, Russian
billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov was registered as a presidential
candidate and will be the only political newcomer in the race. He
joined PM Vladimir Putin and three vet-eran party leaders on the
ballot for the March vote.
(AP, 1/25/12)
2012 Jan 27, Russian officials
said the leader of Islamist separatists in the province of
In-gushetia was killed in a shootout in the village of Ekazhevo
along with two other militants. 4 Russian military officers and five
militants were killed in the neighboring province of Dagestan. In
Kabardino-Balkariya, three masked militants stormed into a school
and stabbed a volleyball player in the gym.
(AP, 1/27/12)
2012 Jan 28, The foreign
ministers of Japan and Russia agreed to strengthen economic and
security cooperation but made no progress on resolving a
long-standing territorial dispute that has kept the two nations from
concluding a peace treaty.
(AP, 1/28/12)
2012 Jan 29, In Russia
thousands of cars flying white ribbons or balloons circled central
Mos-cow on Sunday in a show of protest against PM Vladimir Putin.
(AP, 1/29/12)
2012 Jan 30, Russia's Foreign
Ministry said it has invited Syrian authorities and opposition for
talks in Moscow.
(AP, 1/30/12)
2012 Feb 3, Ukraine's
government blamed Russia for natural gas shortages in some Euro-pean
countries as a severe cold spell grips the region. Germany, Italy
and Austria have re-ported cutbacks in Russian gas supplies, but
Russia's energy giant Gazprom has blamed them on Kiev, accusing
Ukraine of siphoning off gas destined for European consumers.
(AP, 2/3/12)
2012 Feb 4, The Ukrainian
Security Service detained a man sought by Russian authorities on
charges of terrorism and two of his accomplices in Odessa. On Feb 27
the detainees were re-ported to be linked to an anti-Putin plot.
(AP, 2/27/12)
2012 Feb 6, Russian researchers
said that they had succeeded in drilling through four km (2.5 miles)
of ice to the surface of Lake Vostok, a sub-glacial Antarctic lake
which could yield impor-tant scientific discoveries.
(AFP, 2/6/12)(SFC, 2/7/12, p.A7)
2012 Feb 7, Syrian forces
renewed their assault on the flashpoint city of Homs as Russia's
foreign minister stressed the need for reform and dialogue during
talks in Damascus with Presi-dent Bashar Assad about the country's
escalating violence. Activists reported that at least 15 people,
including a 15-year-old boy, were killed in violence across the
country. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council said it is pulling
its ambassadors from Syria. France said it is recalling its
ambassador to Syria for consultations. Other Western powers
including Britain, the United States and Italy have called back
their top envoys in the wake of new violence.
(AP, 2/7/12)
2012 Feb 8, A senior European
Union official said the EU will impose harsher sanctions on Syria,
as Russia tried to broker talks between the vice president and the
opposition to calm vio-lence. Activists reported at least 50 killed
in military assaults targeting government opponents in Homs.
(AP, 2/8/12)
2012 Feb 10, A Russian military
court convicted Lt. Col. Vladimir Nesterets of providing the CIA
with secret information on Russia's new intercontinental ballistic
missiles and sentenced him to 13 years in prison. The Federal
Security Service said Nesterets pleaded guilty to passing on that
classified information in exchange for money.
(AP, 2/10/12)
2012 Feb 15, Authorities said
more than 600 people in Eastern Europe have died during a
record-breaking cold snap. Officials in the Czech Republic blamed
two massive car pile-ups on blinding snow. Authorities in Russia
said 205 people have died, while in Ukraine there have been 112
fatalities; in Poland, 107. Authorities said 7 people have died in
Romania in the past 24 hours, bringing the total there to 86 deaths.
(AP, 2/15/12)
2012 Feb 18, Russian police
said 17 officers have been killed during a 4-day operation to wipe
out several militant bands in Chechnya and Dagestan. At least 20
rebels were reported killed.
(SSFC, 2/19/12, p.A4)
2012 Feb 18, Latvia voted in a
referendum on whether Russian should become the Baltic country's
second national language. The Russians and other minorities who
organized the ref-erendum admit they have virtually no chance at
winning the plebiscite. According to the current law, anyone who
moved to Latvia during the Soviet occupation, or was born to parents
who moved there, is considered a noncitizen and must pass the
Latvian language exam in order to become a citizen. Latvian voters
resoundingly rejected the proposal.
(AP, 2/18/12)
2012 Feb 19, In Russia hundreds
of cars circled central Moscow during an opposition demon-stration
to demand that PM Vladimir Putin allow free elections. A similar
protest in support of Putin a day earlier drew what police said were
2,000 cars.
(AP, 2/19/12)
2012 Feb 21, It was reported
that a team of Russian scientists have revived a plant, Silene
stenophylla, whose seeds came from a squirrel’s chamber in Siberian
permafrost dating back 30k-32k years.
(SFC, 2/21/12, p.A4)
2012 Feb 22, Russia expressed
"serious concern" about the humanitarian situation in Syria and said
it backed an International Committee of the Red Cross call for a
daily two-hour truce that could provide help to civilians.
(AFP, 2/22/12)
2012 Feb 24, Russia welcomed
the appointment of Kofi Annan as the UN and Arab League envoy for
the crisis in Syria and called for an immediate ceasefire to
evacuate wounded from the city of Homs.
(AFP, 2/24/12)
2012 Feb 27, Russian state
television reported that security forces have uncovered a plot to
assassinate PM Vladimir Putin and have arrested suspects linked to a
Chechen rebel leader known for other terror attacks. The suspects
were arrested in Ukraine's Black Sea port city of Odessa after an
accidental explosion Jan. 4 while they were trying to manufacture
explosives at a rented apartment.
(AP, 2/27/12)
2012 Mar 1, Russia's top
investigative agency said it has launched a probe regarding videos
that have shown up on Internet purporting to show fraud taking place
during the country's presidential election, even though it hasn't
taken place yet.
(AP, 3/1/12)
2012 Mar 4, Russians voted in
presidential elections expected to return Vladimir Putin to the
Kremlin. The independent elections watchdog agency Golos said it was
receiving reports of so-called "carousel voting," in which busloads
of voters are driven around to cast ballots multiple times. Putin
won more than 63% of the vote according to the nearly complete
official returns. The opposition and independent observers said the
election was marred by widespread fraud.
(AP, 3/4/12)(AP, 3/5/12)
2012 Mar 5, Thousands of
Russians gathered in Moscow for a massive rally to challenge PM
Vladimir Putin's victory in the presidential election. Police at
night arrested hundreds of protest-ers who remained on Moscow's
Pushkin Square after an officially approved rally finished.
(AP, 3/5/12)(AP, 3/6/12)
2012 Mar 9, Russia said it
opposed an "unbalanced" Washington-backed UN draft resolution on
Syria because it failed to call for a simultaneous halt in violence
by the government and re-bels.
(AFP, 3/9/12)
2012 Mar 10, In Russia more
than 20,000 protesters streamed down a central Moscow ave-nue to
denounce Vladimir Putin's presidential election win, but the crowd's
relatively small size compared to recent protests suggested the
opposition movement has lost some momentum.
(AP, 3/10/12)
2012 Mar 10, Arab and Russian
foreign ministers meeting in Cairo called for an end to the violence
in Syria "whatever its source," as they struggled try to find common
ground on ways to resolve the deadly conflict. Qatari Foreign
Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said that it was time to
send Arab and foreign troops to Syria.
(AFP, 3/10/12)
2012 Mar 11, In Russia a law
took effect in St. Petersburg which, in part prohibits "the
propa-ganda of homosexuality and pedophilia among minors. Gay rights
activists said it would crimi-nalize even reading, writing or
speaking about gay, lesbian, or transgender people. Violations carry
hefty fines up to $16,700.
(http://tinyurl.com/7pwa2zk)
2012 Mar 13, Russian Deputy
Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said Russia will abide by ex-isting
contracts to deliver weapons to Syria despite Pres. Assad's yearlong
crackdown on the opposition.
(AP, 3/13/12)
2012 Mar 13, Russian and South
Korean scientists signed a deal on joint research intended to
recreate a woolly mammoth, an animal which last walked the earth
some 10,000 years ago.
(AFP, 3/13/12)
2012 Mar 14, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Pres. Assad of "inertia" and said
Russia's hugely controversial policy on Syria was not aimed at
defending his regime.
(AFP, 3/14/12)
2012 Mar 16, Russia said it has
encouraged the Syrian government to cooperate with Kofi Annan, the
envoy charged with trying to help end the violence there, and urged
the West to do the same with the Syrian rebels.
(AP, 3/16/12)
2012 Mar 20, Russia said it is
ready to support a UN resolution endorsing Kofi Annan's plan for
settling the Syrian crisis, signaling it is prepared to raise the
pressure on its old ally.
(AP, 3/20/12)
2012 Mar 22, Russia’s Lukoil
signed a $1 billion deal with South Korea's Samsung Engineer-ing to
develop Iraq's second-biggest oil field, in which the energy giant
has a majority stake.
(AFP, 3/22/12)
2012 Mar 20, Russian banker
German Gorbuntsov (45) was shot outside his home in east London and
was put into a medically induced coma. Hew was days away from giving
evidence to an investigation into the attempted murder of a former
business associate. His lawyer be-lieved the attack was connected to
an assassination attempt on Gorbuntsov's partner and co-owner of
Konvers Group, Alexander Antonov, in 2009. A bank he owned in
Moldova, Universal-bank, was closed down in February and he was
wanted there for financial crimes. The Kom-mersant business daily
wrote that Gorbuntsov said he himself was a victim of a raider
attack that caused him to lose his stake of more than 70 percent in
Universalbank.
(AFP, 3/24/12)(Reuters, 3/25/12)
2012 Mar 25, Russian spacecraft
controllers intentionally plunged a defunct communications
satellite, called Express-AM4, into the ocean. The $265 million
satellite was launched into the wrong orbit on Aug 18,2011, and had
been languishing in space ever since. The company Polar Broadband
Systems Ltd. tried in vain to save and recycle the Russian
satellite.
(AFP, 3/28/12)
2012 Mar 29, Russia's top
investigative agency filed new charges against police officers
ac-cused of torturing detainees amid growing public outrage over
police brutality. Kazan resident Sergei Nazarov (52) died earlier
this month of injuries suffered when officers sodomized him with a
champagne bottle. Four officers charged in Novokuznetsk were accused
of causing a de-tainee's death by asphyxiation by putting a gas mask
on him and cutting off his access to air.
(AP, 3/29/12)
2012 Apr 1, Russian police
detained about 55 protesters outside the gates to Red Square, which
was unexpectedly closed to all visitors and tourists to prevent an
anti-Kremlin demonstra-tion.
(AFP, 4/1/12)
2012 Apr 2, A Russian passenger
plane, an ATR-72 turboprop operated by UTair, crashed into a snowy
field in Siberia shortly after takeoff from Tyumen, killing 31 of
the 43 people on board. The 12 survivors were hospitalized in
serious condition.
(AP, 4/2/12)
2012 Apr 3, Russia's Foreign
Ministry announced that the Syrian government said it has be-gun
implementing a UN envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan that requires it to
withdraw its forces from towns and cities within a week.
(AP, 4/3/12)
2012 Apr 3, In Russia a blaze
at Moscow’s Kachalovsky market killed 17 migrant workers who were
unable to escape from the metal shed where they were sleeping. All
were citizens of for-mer Soviet nations in Central Asia.
(AP, 4/3/12)
2012 Apr 4, A Russian antivirus
company claimed that some 600,000 Macs, most in the US and Canada,
have been infected with a trojan horse virus called "Flashback."
Flashback was originally discovered in Sep 2011, and was designed to
disguise itself as an Adobe Flash Player installer, using Flash
player logos. After installing Flashback, the malware seeks out user
names and passwords that are stored on your Mac.
(http://mashable.com/2012/04/05/mac-flashback-trojan/)
2012 Apr 5, Alexei Kudrin,
Russia's former finance minister (2000-2011), announced the
crea-tion of an independent committee to shape policies alternative
to those of the government.
(AP, 4/5/12)
2012 Apr 5, In NYC Russian arms
dealer Viktor Bout (45), dubbed the Merchant of Death, received the
mandatory minimum 25 years in prison in a case that demonstrated the
US gov-ernment's determination to bring him to justice. The judge
also ordered a $15 million forfeiture.
(AFP, 4/6/12)
2012 Apr 6, A Russian-Ukrainian
crew of 8 on board the 29-meter Scorpius yacht, that set sail in
September on an historic expedition around the South and North
Poles, went missing in the Antarctic.
(AFP, 4/6/12)
2012 Apr 9, Russia's top
investigative body said it has dropped charges against a doctor
sus-pected of negligence in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a
prominent lawyer who reported official corruption in Russia, then
died in custody in November, 2009, while suffering from untreated
pancreatitis.
(AP, 4/9/12)
2012 Apr 11, In Russia a large
opposition faction stormed out of parliament to protest Vladimir
Putin's refusal to look into claims of vote-rigging in a mayoral
election that has sparked nation-wide anger. Oleg Shein, a member of
the Just Russia party who ran for mayor in the southern city of
Astrakhan, has been on a hunger strike for 27 days to protest the
results of the March 4 poll that he and other opposition figures
said was marred by rampant fraud in favor of a Krem-lin-backed
candidate.
(AP, 4/11/12)
2012 Apr 16, In San Francisco
the annual Goldman Environmental Prizes were presented 6
individuals. They included Sofia Gatica of Argentina work on
diseases related to agrochemicals; Caroline Canon of Alaska for her
village efforts against oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean; Ma Jun of
China for his efforts on air and water violations by major
manufacturers; Ikal Angelei of Kenya for her efforts to protect Lake
Turkana; Evgenia Chirikova of Russia for her efforts to protect the
Khimki Forest; and Father Edwin Gariguez of the Philippines for
advocating against mining de-velopments on indigenous lands.
(SFC, 4/16/12, p.A10)
2012 Apr 22, China and Russia
launched their first joint naval exercises, with 6 days of war games
in the Yellow Sea that come amid tensions between China and its
Asian neighbors over territorial claims.
(AFP, 4/22/12)
2012 Apr 27, In Kazakhstan a
Soyuz space capsule landed with 2 Russians and an American ending
their 163-day stay at the Int’l. Space Station.
(SFC, 4/28/12, p.A2)
2012 Masha Gessen authored “The
Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.”
(SSFC, 3/25/12, p.F1)
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