A timeline of Russia and former Soviet republics

(Click here for a more detailed chronicle of the Soviet revolution)

1917: Aleksandr Kerensky is appointed by the Duma as prime minister of the provisional government
1917: Bolsheviks overthrow the Kerensky government and install Lenin as leader of Russia ("october revolution")
Jan 1918: Japan invades northern Manchuria, the Sakhalin island and eastern Siberia from the Soviet Union
1918: The Svomas (Free State Art Studios) are inaugurated in Moscow
1918: Vladimir Mayakovsky's futurist play "Misteriya-Buff" is produced by Vsevolod Meyerhold with sets designed by Kazimir Malevich
1918: Moscow replaces St Petersburg as capital of Russia
1918: Lenin signs a truce with Germany and accepts territorial losses; Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine (that has never been independent), Georgia, Armenia (that has not been independent since 1375) and Azerbaijan (that has never been independent) proclaim their independence from Russia; Romania gains Transylvania from Hungary, and Bessarabia (Moldavia) from the Soviet Union thus doubling in size
1919: Finland declares its independence from Russia
Jun 1918: The Soviet Union begins to nationalize the industry
Jul 1918: The Soviet Union adopts its first constitution grants equal rights to men and women
1919: the Armenian mystic Georges Gurdjieff establishes the "Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man"
1919: China invades Mongolia
Mar 1921: The treaty of Riga between Poland and Russia establishes their borders and assigns Galicia (Lviv) to Poland
1921: The civil war ends with Lenin's victory (millions have died of starvation, the population of Petrograd has dropped from 2.5 million in 1917 to 0.6 in 1920)
1921: The 3rd Congress of the Communist International favors exporting the revolution
1921: the Mongolian communists expel the Chinese from Mongolia and install a dictatorship
1921: Ukraine is annexed to the Soviet Union
1922: The Soviet Union is created by uniting Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Transcaucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Azerbajan)
1923: The Soviet Union makes Khiva a separate republic
1923: The Soviet Union opens the first penal colony (gulag) in Solovky
1923: The Tass news agency is founded
1923: Serial killer Vasili Komaroff is arrested in Russia after killing 33 people
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Jan 1924: Lenin dies and is succeeded by Stalin
1924: Petrograd is renamed Leningrad
1924: The Soviet Union reorganizes the Islamic lands of Turkestan into four republics, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
1924: The Soviet Union adopts a constitution based on the dictatorship of the proletariat
May 1924: A treaty confirms Mongolia into the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union in Beijing that returns to the Soviet Union all territories taken by Japan in World War I (eastern Siberia and north Sakhalin)
1927: The Soviet Union launches a compaign of eradication of Islam
1927: The Soviet Union establishes the State University of Circus and Variety Arts to train performers for the Moscow Circus
1928: Stalin enacts the first Five-Year Plan for rapid industrialization of the Soviet Union
1928: The Soviet Union launches a campaign of forced sedentarization and collectivization of the Kazakh nomads
1929: Leon Bronstein (Lev Trotsky), who opposes Stalin, is deported to Turkey
1929: Muslim religious leaders are arrested or killed
1930: The poet Mayakovsky commits suicide
1931: the Soviet government destroys the Christ the Savior Cathedral
1932: one million people in Kazakhstan die of famine (caused by forced collectivization)
1932: anti-communist rebellion in Mongolia
Oct 1932: Stalin, in a speech at Maxim Gorky's home, proclaims that "The production of souls is more important than the production of tanks.... raise my glass to you, writers, the engineers of the human soul"
1933: Four million people in Ukraine die of famine (caused by forced collectivization)
1933: The USA recognizes the Soviet Union and establishes diplomatic relations
1934: Stalin's main advisor, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated, prompting Stalin to begin the "great purge" of the Communist Party (thousands of communists are deported to "gulags")
1934: The "Union of Soviet Writers" is created to enforce "Socialist Realism" in the arts
1934: The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations
1935: the miner Aleksej Stakanov becomes a Soviet hero for his amazing productivity
1935: 94% of agricultural land has been collectivized while famine is killing millions
1935: The Soviet Union declares that the fascist states of Germany and Japan are the enemies
1936: the first show trial against communist leaders is held in Moscow (the defendants "confess")
Jan 1936: Stalin writes an article in the Pravda that attacks Shostakovic's opera "Lady Macbeth", the beginning of the anti-formalist campaign
1937: 2.5 million Soviet citizens are arrested and 700,000 are executed during the "great purges"
1938: Nikolay Bukharin "confesses" treason at a show trial
1938: the communist regime of Mongolia destroys 900 temples and kills thousands of Buddhists
Dec 1938: The poet Mandelstam commits suicide
1939: Laurenti Beria becomes head of the secret police
Nov 1939: Russia invades Finland
1939: While the West is gripped by the Great Depression, the GDP of the Soviet Union has increased 80% in ten years
Aug 1939: The Soviet Union and Japan fight a border war at Nomonhan that leaves 18 thousand Japanese dead
1939: Stalin and Hitler sign a non-aggression pact including the partition of Poland (and assigns the Baltic states to the Soviet Union)
1939: World War II begins with the invasion of Poland by Germany
See the timeline for World War II
1939: Soviet troops invade eastern Poland
1939: Russian aviator Igor Sikorsky invents the helicopter
Jun 1940: The Soviet Union invades Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
1940: Romania returns Bessarabia (Moldavia) to the Soviet Union
1940: Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City
1941: Germany invades the Soviet Union
Aug 1941: The poetess Tsvetaeva/ Cvetaeva commits suicide
1943: The Soviet Union launches a counteroffensive
1944: Finland surrenders Karelia to the Soviet Union
1944: eastern Galicia is conquered by the Soviet Union and eventually annexed to Ukraine
1945: Germany surrenders
1945: At the Yalta conference the Soviet Union, Britain and the USA partition Europe in spheres of influence
1945: Germany and Berlin are divided in four sectors, soon to be come "western" and "easter" (Russian) sectors
1945: Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad) is assigned to Russia
1945: More than 100,000 officers and soldiers have been arrested in 1945 for "counter-revolutionary crimes", bringing the total number of soldiers in the gulags to three million and eleven generals have been executed
1945: Poland's borders are reshaped with Poland gaining Pomerania, Slesia and part of East Prussia from Germany plus the free city of Danzig/ Gdansk and the Soviet Union gaining Lviv/Lwow, Vilnius/Wilno and Brest (respectively to Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus), causing the exodus of 3.5 million Germans and 1.5 million Poles
1946: the Soviet Union begins a secret program of biological weapons (plague, smallpox, anthrax) at Sverdlovsk
1946: Famine kills one million people in Russia and Ukraine
Jul 1946: The Soviet Union annexes the ancient Prussian capital Konigsberg and rename it Kaliningrad
Aug 1946: The poetess Akhmatova is condemned as anticommunist
October 1946: The Greek communists start a civil war
February 1948: Communist coup in Czechoslovakia
June 1948: The Soviet Union enacts a blockade of West Berlin
August 1948: Zdanov dies and Beria purges the party of his protegees
September 1948: communist North Korea declares independence under its leader Kim Il Sung, chosen by the Soviet Union
November 1948: The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee is disbanded
February 1949: The Pravda launches an antisemitic ("anticosmopolitan") campaign
1949: Stalin fires foreign minister Molotov and recalls Krushev to Moscow as first secretary of Moscow's Communist Party
June 1949: 30,000 Greeks are deported from Georgia to Kazakhstan
August 1949: Several leaders of the Communist Party in Leningrad are arrested, accused of a USA-funded conspiracy against Stalin (the "Leningrad Affair"), and many are executed after a secret trial
August 1949: Communists seize power in Hungary and enact a socialist constitution
August 1949: The Greek communists are defeated
August 1949: The Soviet Union detonates its first atomic bomb (based on American designs stolen by Klaus Fuchs)
1949: The Soviet Union forms the Sovet Ekonomicheskoy Vzaimopomoshchi/ Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (known in the West as COMECON) with other socialist European countries
1949: 90 thousand people are deported from the Baltic republic to Siberia, as well as 94 thousand Moldavians and 60 thousand Greeks, Armenians and Turks from the Black Sea
1949: The communists win the Chinese civil war
1949: The Soviet Union explodes its first nuclear weapon
1950: The Soviet Union defeats the OUN in Ukraine after more than 25,000 Soviet soldiers and more than 30,000 civilians have been killed in the civil war
June 1950: communist North Korea (with approval from Stalin) attacks capitalist South Korea, but the invasion fails after USA intervention
May 1952: The leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee are tried and 13 are executed after a secret trial
October 1952: The first party congress in 13 years Stalin promotes Krushev and Georgy Malenkov, head of the missile program and close ally of Beria, to the top positions
January 1953: The "Doctors' Plot" (to assassinate the Soviet leaders) heralds a new wave of anti-semitic persecution
January 1953: The Gulag contain 2.7 million prisoners in 500 work colonies, 60 labor camps and 15 "special-regime" camps for political prisoners (mostly nationalists from Ukraine and Baltic republics) and more than one million people have died in it
March 1953: Stalin dies, replaced by Molotov, Malenkov and Beria, and an amnesty releases 1.2 million prisoners
June 1953: Beria is arrested
Sep 1953: Krushev becomes first secretary of the Communist Party
December 1953: Beria is executed
1953: 1.7 million people have died in gulags since 1929 and about 800,000 have been executed during that period
Feb 1954: The Soviet Union moves Crimea from Russia to Ukraine
March 1954: The KGB takes over the role of the NKVD
Feb 1955: Krushev forces Malenkov to retire and becomes the most powerful man in the Soviet Union
1955: The Soviet Union forms the Warsaw Pact to counterbalance NATO with Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, Rumania
1955: Soviet violinist Oistrakh performs at New York's Carnegie Hall
1955: "Voice of America" begin broadcasting Willis Conover's jazz program
1955: the Soviet Union builds the world's first tokamak nuclear reactor in Moscow
Nov 1955: Krushev visits India
1956: The Boston Symphony Orchestra tours the Soviet Union
1956: Krushev restores the Chechen republic within Russia
February 1956: Nikita Krushev denounces Stalin' crimes in a secret speech to the Communist Party and advocates peaceful coexistence with the capitalist world (beginning of the "Thaw")
June 1956: Krushev fires foreign minister Molotov
Nov 1956: An anti-communist popular uprising led by Imre Nagy in Hungary is crushed by Soviet troops killing 2,800 people
June 1957: Krushev survives an attempted coup by Molotov, Malenkov and others
1957: The World Youth Festival is held in Moscow
Aug 1957: The Soviet Union launches its first intercontinental ballistic missile
Oct 1957: Krushev fires defense minister Georgy Zhukov
1957: The "International Festival of Youth and Students" is held in Moscow, hearlding a cultural "thaw"
1957: A nuclear incident at the Kyshtym nuclear plant causes hundreds of cancer cases and contamination over hundreds of square kilometres
Oct 1957: The Soviet Union launches the first artificial satellite, the Sputnik
Nov 1957: A second artificial satellite carries the dog Laika in orbit
Nov 1957: The first World Conference of Communist Parties votes to hang Hungarian communist Imre Nagy (all vote in favor except the Polish leader Vladislav Gomulka)
1957: The Soviet Union tests the R-7 Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)
March 1958: Krushev fires prime minister Bulganin
July 1958: Bloody insurrection in Chechnya
1958: USA culture is exhibited at the "American Exhibition" in Sokolniki
1959: The communists led by Fidel Castro win the civil war in Cuba
1959: There are 24 million Muslims in the Soviet Union
Sep 1959: Krushev visits the USA
May 1960: The Soviet Union shoots down a U2 spy plane of the USA and captures its pilot
Oct 1960: The Soviet Union tests the most powerful weapon of all time, the "Tsar Bomba", 3000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima
Apr 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first astronaut
1961: Stalingrad is renamed Volgograd
1961: Yugoslavia leaves the Soviet camp and leads the non-aligned movement
Aug 1961: the Soviet Union builds a wall to isolate West Berlin and discourage people from fleeing East Germany
Apr 1962: The USA installs nuclear-armed Jupiter missiles in Turkey
Jun 1962: Striking workers are massacred by the police in Novocherkassk
Oct 1962: Krushev and Kennedy risk a nuclear war over Soviet missiles deployed in Cuba but the Soviet Union withdraws the missiles from Cuba and the USA from Turkey
Jun 1963: Valentina Tereskova becomes the first female astronaut
Oct 1964: While on vacation, Krushev is replaced by the Ukrainian-born Leonid Brezhnev while Alexei Kosygin appointed prime minister
1964: The poet Josef Brodsky is arrested
Feb 1965: After the US bombing of North Vietnam, the Soviet Union funds and arms North Vietnam against the USA
Mar 1965: Soviet astronaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first human to walk in space
Sep 1965: Dissident writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel are arrested
Mar 1965: Alexei Leonov becomes the first astronaut to take a spacewalk
1966: The Chinese Cultural Revolution further alienates Mao and the Soviet Union
1967: Yuri Andropov is appointed head of the KGB
August 1968: Soviet troops crush the democratic movement in Czechoslovakia
1968: The physicist Andrei Sakharov begins a campaign for human rights
1969: Soviet and Chinese troops clash in Asia
1969: The Soviet Union plans an attack on China to remove Mao from power
1970: "Venera 7" makes the first landing of an Earth's spacecraft on another planet (Venus)
1970: There are 47 million Muslims in the Soviet UnionA, growing four times faster than the Christian population
1971: an outbreak of smallpox in Aralsk (Kazakstan) caused by a military program of biological weapons kills dozens of people
1971: "Mars 3" makes the first (successful) landing of an Earth's spacecraft on Mars
Sep 1971: Krushev dies
1972: Breznev signs the first arms-control treaty
1972: Breznev signs a treaty to ban biological weapons but secretely continues producing them
Jul 1975: The first joint Soviet-US mission in space (spaceships Apollo 18 and Soyuz 19 meet in space)
1978: A polish cardinal, Karol Joseph Wojtyla, is elected Pope John Paul II
1978: a Bulgarian dissident, Georgi Markov, is killed with poison by the Bulgarian secret service
December 1979: The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
1979: Leonid Brezhnev is awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature (because his books "had an enormous influence on all types and genres of literature")
1979: Anthrax accidentally released kills 68 people in the Soviet Union
1979: the accidental release of a biological weapon causes an outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in Sverdlovsk
1979: Pope John Paul II visits Poland and supports the anti-communist movement
1980: Lech Walesa leads Polish workers in a strike
1980: The Soviet Union inaugurates the tallest dam in the world, the Nurek Dam, in Tajikistan
1981: a Bulgarian agent tries to kill the Pope
1982: Brezhnev dies and Andropov succeeds him
Sep 1983: Stanislav Petrov realizes that malfunctioning equipment and not an attack from the USA is responsible for a nuclear alarm and refuses to retaliate
Sep 1983: The Soviet Union shoots down a Korean airliner killing 269 people
Feb 1984: Andropov dies and is succeeded by Brezhnev's loyalist Konstantin Chernenko
Mar 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev becomes the new leader of the Soviet Union and replaces foreign minister Andrei Gromyko with Eduard Shevarnadze
Apr 1985: Mikhail Gorbachev launches a campaign of economic restructuring ("perestroika")
1985: 21-year old Garry Kasparov becomes the youngest world champion of chess of all time
Dec 1985: Boris Yeltsin is appointed head of the Communist Party of Moscow
1985: Serial killer Gennady Mikhasevich is arrested in Russia after killing 36 women
1985: Vladimir Putin joins the KGB in East Germany
Apr 1986: A nuclear accident in Chernobyl kills 49 people and spreads nuclear radiations around Europe, with peaks of 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima
1986: Russia launches the permanent space station MIR
1986: The US has 14,000 nuclear warheads and the Soviet Union has 11,000
1986: Two Soviet ships collide in the Black Sea and 398 people die
Oct 1986: Summit in Iceland between Gorbacev and US president Ronald Reagan
1987: Gorbachev publicly criticizes Stalin
1987: The USA and the Soviet Union sign the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which bans all nuclear and non-nuclear missiles with short and medium ranges
1987: Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros sets up the Soros Foundation to promote democracy in the Soviet Union
1987: Mikhail Gorbachev launches a campaign of political openness ("glasnost")
Nov 1987: Gorbachev fires Yeltsin
Feb 1988: Armenia and Azerbaijan begin fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh
Jun 1988: The Communist Party Conference sanctions the rising power of elected state bodies at the expense of the Communist Party
Dec 1988: An earthquake in Armenia killing tens of thousands of people
1989: The Soviet Union withdraws from Afghanistan after 15,000 Soviet soldiers have been killed and almost one million Afghans have been killed
Mar 1989: the Soviet Union holds the first free elections since 1917, Yeltsin wins 90% of the vote in Moscow, and the Communist Party loses in the Baltic states
Jul 1989: Miners strike in Siberia
1989: In Poland the communist government and Solidarity agree to share power
1989: In East Germany mass demonstrations force the communist government to resign
Nov 1989: The Berlin Wall is destroyed by millions of ecstatic Germans, thus leading to the reunification of east and west Germany (november)
1989: The communist government of Bulgaria resigns
1989: The communist government of Czechoslovakia resigns
1989: John Paul II meets Gorbachev, the first meeting between a Pope and a Soviet leader
1989: The communist dictator of Romania is executed
Feb 1990: Pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the Soviet Union and the Communist Party loses local elections in most cities
Jun 1990: Boris Yeltsin, chairman of Russia's parliament, declares the independence of Russia
1990: Lithuania declares its indipendence from the Soviet Union, soon followed by Estonia and Latvia
1990: A democratic revolution in Mongolia installs Punsalmaagiin Ochirbat as president
1990: Aleksy II (Mikhailovich Ridiger) becomes the first patriarch of the Russian Orthodox church since 1917 to be elected without government intervention
1990: Serial killer Andrei Chikatilo is arrested in Russia after killing 53 people
1990: McDonald's opens in Russia
Dec 1990: The chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, John Phelan, leads a group of US experts to Russia to advise on capitalist reforms
1991: Ukraine declares its independence after a referendum (92% of the west Ukraine, 90% of east Ukraine and 54% of Crimea vote for independence)
Jun 1991: Sobchak wins the mayoral elections in Leningrad and the city votes to return to its historical name of Saint Petersburg
1991: Armenia declares its independence and Levon Ter-Petrossian is elected president
Jun 1991: Boris Yeltsin is elected president of the Russian Federation, the first democratically elected leader of Russia ever
Aug 1991: A plot to overthrow the Gorbachev government is foiled by Boris Yeltsin
Nov 1991: Yeltsin names Yegor Gaidar minister of Economics and Finance in charge of capitalist reforms
Dec 1991: Leonid Kravchuk is elected president of Ukraine
Dec 1991: The Soviet Union is dismantled and Russia becomes an independent federation under Boris Yeltsin (december), whereas Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan gain independence
1991: Chechnya declares independence from Russia, but Russia objects
1991: Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev hijacks a Russian plane to Ankara, demanding independence for his country
Nov 1991: The KGB is dismantled
Nov 1991: Gaidar hires US economist Jeffrey Sachs, the architect of Poland's "shock therapy"
Jan 1992: Yeltsin's economic reformist Yegor Gaidar enacts price liberalization that de facto abolishes the communist system
1992: Veteran Soviet soldier Jumabay Khojiyev changes his name to Juma Namangani and joins the Islamic rebels in Tajikistan
1992: Yeltsin cancels the secret program of biological weapons
1992: The provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia declare their independence from Georgia, igniting a civil war
1992: Yuri Luzhkov becomes mayor of Moscow
1992: Estonia's prime minister Mart Laar heads a young government (average age: 35) that introduces a flat income-tax, free trade and privatization
1992: Russia's population peaks at 148 million
May 1992: Civil war erupts in Tajikistan against president Rahmon Nabiyev
Oct 1992: Russia distributes 144 million vouchers to its citizens for them to purchase shares in old Soviet state enterprises, a scheme devised by Anatoly Chubais for mass privatization
Dec 1992: Gaidar, criticized for imposing ruthless economic reforms, is replaced by Viktor Chernomyrdin as prime minister of Russia
Oct 1993: Boris Yeltsin suspends the Supreme Soviet and uses the army to quell a revolt by the parliament
1993: A new Russian constitution is enacted, with a State Duma replacing the Supreme Soviet
1993: Yeltsin appoints Pavel Borodin to run Russia's state property portfolio that includes churches, dachas, hotels and resorts
Jun 1993: Anatoly Chubais co-founds the electoral bloc "Russia's Choice"(Vybor Rossii) which is headed by Yegor Gaidar
Dec 1993: Nationalists and former Communists win 43% of the vote, while Gaidar's party wins only 15%
1994: Organized crime control most of Russia's business
1994: general Aslan Maskhadov leads the Chechen arym against Russia
1994: Leonid Kuchma is elected president of Ukraine and the world powers (Russia, USA, Britain) recognize Ukraine's borders including Crimea in return for Ukraine's denuclearization
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
1994: a ferry capsizes in Estonia killing 1049 people
Nov 1994: In the middle of the civil war Emomali Rahmon becomes president of Tajikistan
Dec 1994: Russian troops invade the runaway republic of Chechnya
Jun 1994: Through the voucher privatization program, some 15,000 state-owned firms have been privatized in Russia since 1992
Jul 1994: Russia's president Yeltsin launches the second phase of privatization (direct cash sales of shares in the remaining state enterprises)
1994: Russia's homicide rate peak at 32.6 per 100 thousand persons
Jun 1995: Chechen separatists led by warlord Shamil Basayev take thousands of hostages in Russian villages (100 die when Russian soldiers free them)
1995: Yeltsin launches a third phase of privatization, the "loans for shares" scheme (bank that loan money to state enterprises obtain a share of them)
1995: GDP has collapsed to 50% of 1991's level
1995: Russia and the USA begin a program designed by Thomas Neff to decommission 20,000 Soviet nuclear warheads and convert them into fuel for the nuclear power plants of the USA ("Megatons to Megawatts")
1995: The The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) is established, the successor to the KGB
Mar 1995: Russian astronaut Valery Polyakov spends more than one year in the MIR space station
Dec 1995: A new generation to tycoons/oligarchs has emerged in Russia, such as Roman Abramovich, Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Potanin
Feb 1996: Yeltsin's fourth phase of privatization grants shares in about 6,000 state-controlled firms to regional governments
Jul 1996: Boris Yeltsin wins the first presidential elections of Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union
Aug 1996: Russia withdraws from Chechnya, after tens of thousands of people died, and leaves Chechnya de facto independent
1996: China, Russia and three (later four) former Soviet republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan) form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
1996: Russia bans the death penalty
1996: Serial killer Anatoly Onoprienko is arrested in Ukraine after killing 52 people
1997: general (and former rebel leader) Aslan Maskhadov is elected president of Chechnya
May 1997: Aslan Maskhadov signs a peace treaty with Yeltsin in Moscow
Jun 1997: The USA and Russia broker a peace in Tajikistan that ends the civil war after about 100 thousand people have been killed
1997: Arkady Volozh launches the search engine Yandex
1997: Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin writes the article "Fascism - Borderless and Red", and publishes "Foundations of Geopolitics", calling on Russia to fight the Western liberal democracies
1997: Natsagiyn Bagabandi is elected president of Mongolia
1998: Russia joins the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
1998: Russia's GDP has contracted almost 30% since 1991
1998: Juma Namangani and Tohir Yuldashev found the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or IMU
Jul 1998: Former KGB operative Vladimir Putin is appointed head of the FSB, the Russian secret services
1998: Armenian president Ter-Petrossian resigns and is prelaced by Robert Kocharyan
Aug 1998: A banking crisis leads to a 64% drop in the rouble and inflation of 41%
Dec 1998: Yury Luzhkov founds the Fatherland Party/ Otechestvo party
Nov 1998: Alexander Litvinenko and other FSB officers publicly accuse their superiors of ordering the assassination of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky
Nov 1998: Yuri Skuratov unveils bribes paid by Swiss firm Mabetex to Borodin
Feb 1999: Juma Namangani's Islamic militia IMU stages tries to assassinate Uzbekistan's president Karimov, killing mroe than 20 people
1999: China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan form the Shanghai Five organization
Mar 1999: Alexander Litvinenko is arrested and later flees to London
1999: general Aslan Maskhadov is ousted as president of Chechnya and returns to lead the guerrilla against Russia
1999: the prime minister of Armenia is assassinated and replaced by Andranik Markarian
Mar 1999: A bomb in Vladikavkaz (blamed on Chechen terrorists) kills 53 people and Putin calls for a strong military response
May 1999: Yeltsin fires his prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, who then founds the All Russia/ Vsya Rossiya party
Jun 1999: Italian correspondent Giulietto Chiesa publishes an article in which predicts "state terrorism" in Moscow, based on government leaks
Jul 1999: Aleksandr Zhilin publishes an article in which predicts terrorist attacks in Moscow, based on government leaks
Aug 1999: Putin is appointed prime minister
Aug 1999: Chechen separatists led by Shamil Basayev, funded by Berezovsky to provoke a crisis, stage a brief invasion of Dagestan
Aug 1999: Georgi Chuglazov is removed as head of the investigation into the Mabetex scandal
Sep 1999: Chechen separatists are blamed for terrorist attacks on Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk that kill nearly 300 people, although rumors surface that the attacks were work of Putin's FSB, especially after similar unexploded bombs are found at Ryazan and they are traced back to the Russian military
Oct 1999: Vladislav Surkov founds the pro-Putin party Unity
Dec 1999: Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party wins parliamentary elections with 24.3% of votes, followed by Putin's Unity party with 23.3% of votes and by OVR (the alliance of Luzhkov and Primakov) with 13.3%
Dec 1999: Yeltsin resigns and Putin becomes acting president, granting Yeltsin permanent immunity from prosecution
1999: Russia has 2.7 million legally registered private enterprises
1999: Ukrainian and Russian arm dealers sell cruise missiles to Iran and China
Oct 1999: Russia removes Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and begins a second invasion of Chechnya that will kill 25,000 people, and a powerful Chechen clan led by Akhmad Kadyrov defects to the Moscow side and Akhmal's son Ramzan forms a militia to fight alongside Putin's state security service
1999: Nikolay Patrushev is appointed director of the FSB
Dec 1999: Yeltsin resigns
Feb 2000: Russia conquers Chechnya's capital Grozny
Mar 2000: Putin is elected president of Russia
Aug 2000: The sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine and the fire that damages the Ostankino television tower mark the decline of Russia as a power
2000: Estonia declares Internet access a human right
2000: Alexei Kudrin is appointed finance minister
Apr 2000: Putin fires Yuri Skuratov who investigated the Mabetex scandal
2000: Boris Berezovsky flees from Russia to Britain and admits that the 1999 terrorist attacks were carried out by the FSB
Dec 2000: Juma Namangani's Islamic militia IMU joins the Taliban in Afghanistan
2000: the first suicide bombing in Chechnya
Aug 2000: A corruption scandal erupts about the Three Whales shopping mall, owned by a former FSB chief, Sergey Zuev
Dec 2000: The officer investigating the Three Whales scandal, Pavel Zaitsev, is arested
2001: Russia's share of the world's gross domestic product is only 1%
2001: The MIR space station is retired
Jan 2001: Pavel Borodin is arrested in the USA for money laundering but soon released on bail
Mar 2001: Putin appoints Sergei Ivanov as defense minister
2001: Uzbekistan joins the Shanghai Five organization, which is then renamed Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
May 2001: Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin founds the Eurasia Party
Sep 2001: Putin delivers a speech in German to Germany's parliament, asking for collaboration
Nov 2001: Juma Namangani, leader of the Islamic militia IMU, is killed by an air strike
2001: there are 20 million Muslims in Russia (15% of the population)
2002: 120 Russians soldiers die when Chechen rebels shoot down a helicopter
2002: Alexander Litvinenko's book "Blowing Up Russia" charges that the 1999 apartment bombings were carried out by the FSB, not by Chechen terrorists
Oct 2002: Chechen guerrillas directed by Basayev take 700 Russians hostage in a Moscow theater (129 die when Russian soldiers storm the theater with poisonous gas)
Dec 2002: suicide bombers kill 72 people in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya
2003: Mass graves are discovered in Chechnya with thousands of bodies
May 2003: 60 people die in a bomb attack on Russians in Chechnya
Jun 2003: A female suicide bomber kills 16 people at a Russian military base near Chechnya
Jul 2003: Chechen suicide bombers hit a rock concert in Moscow and kill 15 people
Aug 2003: 50 people are killed in a suicide bombing at a military hospital in North Ossetia
Dec 2003: Chechen rebels blow up a train and kill 44 people
Apr 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a member of parliament who is investigating the 1999 bombings, is killed
Jul 2003: Yury Shchekochikhin, a member of parliament who is investigating the Three Whales scandal, dies of a mysterious disease
Oct 2003: the FSB arrests Yukos' chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky (who owns 36.6% of the company), one of the richest men in the world
2003: Eduard Shevarnadze resigns as president of Georgia amid mass protests ("Rose Revolution")
2003: Between 1999 and 2003, Russia economy has grown by about 33%
2003: The Putin government acquires all national tv stations
2003: Viktor Cherkesov is appointed director of the Federal Drug Control Service
Oct 2003: Mikhail Trepashkin, who has found out that the author of the 1999 bombings was an FSB agent, is arrested on false charges
Feb 2004: Chechen terrorists bomb the Moscow underground, killing 41 people
Jun 2004: A suicide bomber kills 10 people in Moscow
2004: Putin's former bodyguard Roman Tsepov dies poisoned
2004: Russia's oil production has increased 50% since 2004
2004: Russia and China settle all border disputes, mostly favoring China
2004: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia join the European Union
2004: Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed by Chechen terrorists of Shamil Basayev's group in a spectacular stadium bombing
Mar 2004: terrorist attacks by the Islamic Jihad Union kill 47 people in Uzbekistan
Jun 2004: Chechen rebels kill 92 people in neighboring Ingushetia
Aug 2004: Two female Chechen suicide bombers of Basayev's group blow up two Russian airplanes, killing 90 people
May 2004: A bomb kills 24 people in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya
Sep 2004: Chechen terrorists led by Shamil Basayev take more than 1,000 hostages in a Beslan school and kill 331, mostly children
2004: Chechen leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev is assassinated by Russian agents in Qatar
2004: due to low birth rate and high death rate, the population of Russia declines by 3.5 million between 1991 and 2004
Oct 2004: Rigged elections initially declare pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych the winner and protests erupt ("Orange Revolution")
2004: US journalist Paul Klebnikov is gunned down in downtown Moscow
Jan 2005: Pro-western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko is finally declared the winner of elections in Ukraine and becomes the new president ("Orange Revolution")
2005: Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov is killed by Russian forces
2005: Russia launches an English-language TV network, Russia Today (RT)
Mar 2005: Maskhadov is killed by Russian security forces in Chechnya
Jul 2005: the opposition in Kyrgyzstan forces the resignation of president Askar Akayev, who is replaced by Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the winner of national elections ("Tulip Revolution")
May 2005: 850 people die in anti-government protests in the Uzbek city of Andijan (the USA and Britain protest, Russia and China applaud the crackdown)
2005: a Caspian oil pipeline opens that bypasses both Russia and the Arab countries
2005: Russia ends its de facto dollar peg and aligns the rouble with the euro
2005: four bombs explode in the southern republic of Dagestan and kill eight people
2005: USA television channel ABC interviews the most wanted terrorist in Russia, Shamil Basayev
2005: Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev sets a new record for the most cumulative time in space (800 days)
Oct 2005: Chechen militants attack the southern Russian city of Nalchik and 139 people are killed, including 94 militants
Mar 2005: former Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov is killed by Russian troops
2005: Nambaryn Enkhbayar is elected president of Mongolia
2005: Russia sells "defense" missiles to Iran
2005: a row between Russia and Ukraine causes shortages of Russian gas supplies to Europe
Sep 2005: Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schroeder signs a deal with Russia to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline, a multibillion-dollar project for Russia's state gas company Gazprom
Dec 2005: Former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder is hired by Russia's Gazprom
Dec 2005: Chechen prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of assassinated Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov, introduces elements of Islamic law shariha in Chechnya
2005: Serial killer Serhiy Tkach is arrested in Russia after killing 36 little girls
2005: Russian oligarchs Vladimir Yakunin and Konstantin Malofeyev, allies of Putin, set up organizations to destabilize Western democracies and weaken NATO by funding neofascist movements like the National Front in France, the Northern League in Italy and Alternative for Germany
2006: Serial killer Alexander Pichushkin is arrested in Russia after killing 48 people
2006: Russia shuts down two newspapers that reprint ironic cartoons about the Islamic prophet Mohammed
2006: Russia authorizes the FSB to carry out assassinations abroad
Mar 2006: Chechen prime minister Ramzan Kadyrov introduces a law that mandates the Islamic headscarf for women in Chechnya
2006: the Uzbek government jails dissidents Sandjar Umarov and Mukhtabar Tojibayeva
2006: Russia starts building an oil pipeline near Lake Baikal, that holds more than 20% of the Earth's nonfrozen fresh water
Jun 2006: Prosecutor general Yury Chaika, an ally of Viktor Cherkesov, reopens the Three Whales case and arrests Sergey Zuev
2006: Chechen leader Shamil Basayev is killed
Oct 2006: Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who was a critic of Russia's policies in Chechnya, is murdered
Dec 2006: Turkmenistan's president Saparmurat Niyazov dies and is succeeded by Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov
Nov 2006: Alexander Litvinenko is poisoned in London, and the British authorities blame former FSB agent Andrey Lugovoy
2007: Ramzan Kadyrov, suspected of human-rights abuses and of involvement in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, is elected president of Chechnya
2007: Putin appoints Sergei Ivanov as first deputy prime minister
2007: for the first time since the death of Czar Aleksandr III in 1894 the Orthodox church presides over the funeral of a state figure (former president Boris Yeltsin)
2007: ethnic Russians riot in Estonia to protest the removal of a Soviet monument
2007: Andranik Markarian dies of heart attack and Serzh Sarksyan is elected prime minister of Armenia
Feb 2007: Putin gives a speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he argues for a multipolar world order
2007: Russian president Vladimir Putin appoints Victor Zubkov prime minister
2007: Driven down by AIDS, alcohol and suicide, the population of Russia declines by 700,000 people a year
2007: serial killer Aleksandr Pichushkin confesses to 61 people
2007: Putin is the first Russian leader to travel to Iran since 1943
2007: Vladimir Putin's party wins more than 60% of the vote in parliamentary elections
Jul 2007: 73 students and clerics are killed in clashes between security forces and militants (led by cleric Abdul Aziz) holed in the Lal Masjid/ Red Mosque of Islamabad, Pakistan (after they take eight Chinese women hostage), and hundreds of people are killed in subsequent bombings by Islamists
2007: Russian cyberattacks try to disrupt elections in Estonia
Sep 2007: Russia establishes the Investigative Committee under Alexander Bastrykin, an ally of deputy prime minister Igor Sechin, thereby reducing the power of prosecutor general Yury Chaika
Oct 2007: Several senior officers of the Federal Drug Control Service are arrested by agents of the FSB and the Investigative Committee in what is widely viewed as a feud of the clan of Viktor Cherkesov (and prosecutor general Yury Chaika) against the clan of debuty minister Igor Sechin (and the FSB)
2007: Russian scientists dive underneath the North Pole leading Russia to claim half of the Arctic seabed
Jan 2008: Russia uses supplies of natural gas as a political weapon against the Ukraine
2008: Spain arrests the leaders of the St Petersburg-based Tambov-Malyshev gang, close associates of Putin
2008: Russia's economy has been growing on average 7% a year since 1999
March 2008: Dmitry Medvedev wins elections in Russia and succeeds Putin, who is appointed prime minister
Apr 2008: Germany opposes expanding NATO to Ukraine and Georgia at the NATO summit in Bucharest, but they are promised membership at some unspecified time in the future
May 2008: Cherkesov is removed from his post at the Federal Drug Control Service
Jul 2008: Oil prices peak at $147 per barrel, greatly benefiting the Russian economy
August 2008: Russia sends tanks into Georgia and bombs Georgian air bases after Georgia launches a military offensive to retake the breakaway province of South Ossetia, and Russia de facto annexes South Ossetia and Abkhazia
September 2008: Russian stock markets lose more than 50% of their peak value of May 2008
October 2008: Russia's Supreme Court rules that the last czar, Nikolay II, should be rehabilitated as a victim of political persecution
Nov 2008: The attorney Sergei Magnitski, who had exposed police corruption, is arrested by the very police officers he accused of corruption
2008: Youstol Dispage dies
2008: Russia supplies 28% of Europe's natural gas
Oct 2008: A Russian military convoy is attacked by Muslim sepatarists in Ingushetia
Nov 2008: A suicide bomber kills 12 people on a bus in North Ossetia
Jan 2009: Russian Orthodox patriarch Aleksy II dies and is succeeded by metropolitan Kirill of Smolensk
2009: Tsakhia Elbegdorj is elected president of Mongolia and presides over an economic boom tied to gold, silver and copper mining
2009: Russia Today spreads Wayne Madsen's conspiracy theory that the swine flu was developed in a US laboratory
Apr 2009: The counter-terrorism operation in Chechnya is officially ended
May 2009: Unemployment skyrockets in Lithuania (from 4.3% in 2008 to 16.8%), Latvia (6.1% to 17.4%) and Estonia (3.7% to 13.9%)
Jun 2009: A sniper kills the interior minister of Russia's Muslim region of Dagestan and a suicide car bomber tries to assassinate the president of Russia's Muslim region of Ingushetia
Jul 2009: Russian human rights activist Natalya Estemirova is assassinated in Chechnya, following the murders of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov (january, Moscow), former Kadyrov bodyguard Umar Israilov (january, Vienna), former Chechen commander Sulim Yamadayev (march, Dubai), and Yamadayev's brother Ruslan (september, Moscow)
Jul 2009: the Russian economy declines by 11% over the previous year
Aug 2009: 25 people are killed by a suicide bomber in Nazran, the capital of Ingushetia
Sep 2009: Yielding to Russian pressure, the USA cancels a missile defense system in Eastern Europe
Oct 2009: The verse "Be thankful or grateful to God" from the Quran mysteriously appears on the leg of a nine-month boy of Dagestan, Ali Yakubov
Nov 2009: The attorney Sergei Magnitski, who had exposed police corruption, is murdered by the police in prison
Nov 2009: Islamic terrorists led by Doku Umarov bomb the "Nevsky Express" train in Russia killing 28 people, the first deadly terrorist attack outside Chechnya since 2004
Nov 2009: A report from the New York Academy of Sciences estimates that, due to the Chernobyl disaster, almost one million people have died, mainly from cancer, between 1986 and 2004
Nov 2009: Police officer Aleksei Dymovsky reveals police corruption in two videos posted on the Internet and is immediately fired and arrested
Dec 2009: 112 people die of an explosion at a nightclub in Perm caused by fireworks
Dec 2009: Due to the world economic crisis, Russia's GDP contracts 7.9% in 2009
Dec 2009: Russia's economy contracts 7.8% in 2009, its worst recession since the end of the Soviet Union
2009: Russian cybercriminal Georgiy Avanesov starts the Bredolab network that will hijack tens of millions of computers around the world
Jan 2010: Russian police kill three Islamic fighters and a suicide bomber kills six police officers in Dagestan
2010: Russia's population is 143 million
2010: The first oil pipeline from Russia to China is completed
Feb 2010: Viktor Yanukovich wins democratic elections in Ukraine against prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko
Mar 2010: Muslim women of Doku Umarov's terrorist organization stage a double suicide bombing on the Moscow subway that kills 40 people
Mar 2010: The Russian-backed opposition led by Roza Otunbayeva stages a coup in Kyrgyzstan and deposes president Kurmanbek Bakiyev
Mar 2010: In response to Aleksei Dymovsky's videos, the Russian parliament establishes harsh penalties for officers who criticize their superiors
Apr 2010: Polish president Lech Kaczynski and other Polish officials die in a plane crash near the Russian city of Smolensk
TM, ®, Copyright © 2010 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
Jun 2010: Ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan kills more about 2,000 people
Sep 2010: A suicide bomber kills three Russian soldiers in Dagestan
Sep 2010: A suicide bomber kills 17 people in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia
Sep 2010: Islamic militants kill 23 soldiers in Tajikistan
Sep 2010: Moscow's flaglantry corrupt mayor Yuri Luzhkov is deposed by president Medvedev
Oct 2010: A report by Transparency International ranks Russia as the most corrupt country in Europe and one of the most corrupt in the world
Oct 2010: Deputy prime minister Sergey Sobyanin becomes mayor of Moscow, a close ally of oligarch Vladimir Bogdanov
Dec 2010: Riots in Moscow among football fans escalate into racial riots between ethnic Russians and North Caucasians
2010: Russia begins building the high-tech city of Skolkovo in a special economic zone
2010: Mainland China's trade with Central Asian countries exceed Russia's for the first time
Jan 2011: 35 people are killed by a suicide bomber at Moscow's Domodedovo airport and Chechen warlord Doku Umarov takes responsibility
Apr 2011: A subway bombing kills 12 people in Belarus' capital Minsk
Apr 2011: Russia and China allow the United Nations Security Council to vote a resolution which authorized NATO military attacks in Libya to protect anti-government protesters, but do not allow a similar resolution against Syria that is also killing hundreds of protesters
Jul 2011: Russia condemns to life in prison the members of Lev Molotkov's neo-Nazi gang who killed 27 people of Asian or African origins
2011: The USA has 413 billionaires, China has 115 billionaires, Russia 101, India 55, Germany 52, Britain 32, Brazil 30, and Japan 26
Aug 2011: Suicide bombers kill 8 people in Chechnya
Sep 2011: Russia and China are the only countries to support Syria's crackdown on dissidents while even Syria's ally Iran distances itself from Assad's regime
Sep 2011: Medvedev fires finance minister Alexei Kudrin who spoke up against excessive spending
Oct 2011: Former Ukraine's prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko is sentenced to seven years in jail
Oct 2011: Almazbek Atambayev is elected president of Kyrgyzstan
Dec 2011: The biggest anti-Putin demonstration ever takes place in Moscow, and Putin blames Hillary Clinton for the demonstrations
Dec 2011: Kazakhstan's security forces kill many striking oil workers (the Zhanaozen massacre)
Jan 2012: Russia joins the World Trade Organisation
2012: Putin appoints Sergei Shoigu as defense minister
2012: Former Mongolia's president Enkhbayar is sentenced to jail for corruption
Feb 2012: A Chechen plot to assassinate Putin is foiled in the Ukraine
Feb 2012: Tens of thousands of people protest against Putin's rule
Feb 2012: The all-female rock group Pussy Riot perform the song “Mother of God, Drive Putin Away!” in Moscow’s largest cathedral, the Orthodox Cathedral of Christ the Savior
Mar 2012: Putin is reelected president of Russia, but fails to win in Moscow
May 2012: NATO activates a missile defence system in Europe despite strong Russian opposition, and in response Russia launches a program of rearmament
Jun 2012: Tens of thousands of people protest again against Putin's rule
Jul 2012: A flood kills 172 people and devastates the town of Krymsk
Jul 2012: Russia introduces the "foreign agent law" to marginalize dissident voices
Jul 2012: Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny is charged with embezzlement
Aug 2012: Russia joins the World Trade Organization
Sep 2012: Alexander Prokhanov founds the neofascist Izborsk Club
Oct 2012: Bidzina Ivanishvili, Georgia's richest man, wins parliamentary elections with his party Georgian Dream and becomes the new prime minister
Mar 2012: Two members of the Pussy Riot punk band are jailed for staging an anti-Putin protest
2012: Mongolia's GDP growth peaks at 17%
2012: Valery Gerasimov, head of the Russian Army, enacts a new doctrine of war that emphasizes public messaging as a means of stirring foreign dissent
2012: Anonymous trolls in St Petersburg, financed by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to spread "fake news" in the USA
Dec 2012: The USA passes the Magnitsky Act to punish Russian politicians for the death of dissident Sergei Magnitsky
Feb 2013: A meteor injures more than 1000 people in Chelyabinsk
Aug 2013: Russia implements anti-gay legislation, banning "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to children", at the same time that many countries begin to recognize gay marriage
Sep 2013: The USA and Russia agree on a plan to remove Syria's chemical weapons after the USA threatened military intervention
Oct 2013: A female Islamic suicide bomber kills six people on a bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd
Oct 2013: Giorgi Margvelashvilii of Ivanishvili's party wins presidential elections in Georgia as the country prepares to transition to a parliamentary system
Nov 2013: Russia pressures Ukraine to reject a trade deal with the European Union, but pro-EU protesters take to the streets
Dec 2013: Putin pardons ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who then moves to Western Europe, and the Pussy Riot members
Dec 2013: Two Islamic suicide bombers from Doku Umarov's terrorist organization kill 18 people at a train station and 16 on a trolley bus in the southern Russian city of Volgograd
2013: Ukraine's economy is smaller than it was in 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union
2013: A quarter of all Russian men die before they are 55, mainly because of alcohol
2013: Oil and gas account for 75% of all Russian exports and 45% of what Russians buy is imported
2014: Russia Today and anonymous Russian trolls on social media spread Cyril Broderick's conspiracy theory that the ebola virus spreading in West Africa has been engineered by the USA and then spread the rumor that Atlanta is infected with ebola
Jan 2014: Russia kills Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, who is succeeded by Aslan Byutukayev, as well as 12 other warlords and 65 members of Islamic terrorist organizations
Feb 2014: Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and opposition leaders Vitali Klitschko (UDAR/Democratic Alliance for Reform), Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Batkivshchyna/ Fatherland Party) and Oleh Tyahnibok (Svoboda/Freedom Party) agree to hold early presidential elections after 88 protesters are killed and soon afterwards Yulia Tymoshenko is freed from jail and parliament votes to remove Yanukovych from power and replace him with Oleksandr Turchynov, a close Tymoshenko ally
Feb 2014: Russia's defense minister Sergei Shoigu announces that Russia plans to increase its military presence abroad, including in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua
Mar 2014: Russia annexes Ukraine's Crimea and supports separatists in pro-Russian regions (notably Donbass)
Mar 2014: The USA arrests Ukrainian tycoon Dmitry Firtash for having paid bribes to the Indian government
2014: Pavel Durov, founder of social media platform VKontake, flees Russia
2014: A new Russian law makes it illegal to state that Russia invaded Poland during World War II or that it committed war crimes
2014: Dmitriy Utkin, a veteran of the First and Second Chechen Wars, and Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin found Russia's mercenary Wagner Group
May 2014: Ukraine's tycoon Petro Poroshenko is elected president while dozens of people are killed in riots between pro- and anti-Russian groups in Ukraine, notably more than 40 pro-Russians burned alive when an Odessa building is set on fire
May 2014: 46 Pro-Russian activists are massacred in Odessa
Jun 2014: Ukraine signs a partnership agreement with the European Union despite Russian opposition
Jul 2014: More than 1,000 civilians and combatants have been killed since mid-April when Ukraine moved to regain control of the secessionist pro-Russian regions (notably Donbass)
Jul 2014: Russia's president Putin visits Cuba and cancels $30 billion in Cuban debt
Jul 2014: A Russian military plane shoots down a Ukrainian jet fighter over Ukrainian territory and a Russian missile shot by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine shoots down Malaysian flight MH17 over Ukraine killing all 298 people on board, mostly Dutch citizens
Nov 2014: More than 4,000 people have died in Ukraine (pro-Russian rebels, civilians and government troops), and nearly 900,000 people have fled their homes, of whom nearly 400,000 went to Russia
Nov 2014: Russia and China sign a colossal oil and gas deal, using the Chinese yuan as the trading currency
Dec 2014: Due to lower oil prices and Western sanctions, Russian rouble falls to its lowest value against the dollar since 1998, having lost 50% in just one year
Dec 2014: Chechen rebels attack a media building and a school in Chechnya's capital Grozny, leaving 16 dead including 9 militants
Jan 2015: The Eurasian Economic Union, which includes Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, is inaugurated
Feb 2015: Ukraine and the Russian-supported separatists sign a ceasefire after 5,800 people (including 200 Russian "volunteers") have died in one year of civil war, with the pro-Russian rebels retaining Luhansk and Donetsk
Feb 2015: Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov is killed by Kadyrov's Chechen security forces while he was trying to organize protests against Russia's support for the Ukrainian separatists
Mar 2015: Uzbekistan's president Islam Karimov jails his own daughter Gulnara Karimova
Apr 2015: Ukraine bans Soviet flags, orders the destruction of Soviet-era statues and renames town squares
Apr 2015: At least 9 Yanukovych allies have died in just three months in mysterious circumstances
May 2015: Ukrainian president Poroshenko appoints Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Georgian president, governor of the Odessa region
May 2015: Putin signs legislation that bans most foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
Jun 2015: Russian Islamists pledge allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
Aug 2015: Oil prices fall below $40 a barrel for first time since 2009
Sep 2015: Clashes between police and supporters of general Aduhalim Nazarzoda, a former member of the anti-government United Tajik Opposition (UTO), kill 17 people in Tajikistan
Sep 2015: Russia begins a bombing campaign in Syria against rebels to defend Assad's regime
Oct 2015: ISIS in Sinai (Egypt) blows up a Russian airplane killing 224 people, mostly Russian tourists
Nov 2015: Russia kills 14 Islamists who were smuggling fighters out of the North Caucasus region to join ISIS
Dec 2015: Russian cyber-intelligence disrupts the power grid of western Ukraine
Dec 2015: Russian air strikes on Syria have killed more than 1,000 civilians since they began in september
2015: Russian trolls on social media spread the conspiracy theory that the C.D.C. in the USA hid evidence that vaccines cause autism
2015: Russian secret services hack the German parliament and steals Merkel emails
2015: India's GDP passes Russian's GDP
2016: Russian trolls on social media publicize Andrew Wakefield's documentary "Vaxxed - From Cover-Up to Catastrophe" and the conspiracy theory that autism rates are 50% among vaccinated children
2016: Putin demotes Sergei Ivanov
2016: Spain issues warrants for the arrest of several Putin associates who are suspected of working with the Russian mafia
Jan 2016: Oil prices fall below $30 a barrel for the first time since april 2004
Jan 2016: The Russian rouble hits a new record low of 80 against the US dollar
Jan 2016: A British investigation concludes that Alexander Litvinenko was killed by the Russian secret services
Feb 2016: Russia arrests 7 Muslims suspected of being ISIS terrorists plotting a terror attack in Russia's fourth-largest city Yekaterinburg
Mar 2016: Russian nationalist Aleksandr Dugin endorses Donald Trump for president of the USA
Jun 2016: Russian track and field athletes are banned from the Olympic games because of a state-organized doping scheme
Aug 2016: Russian bombers use Iran to launch air strikes against Islamists and pro-democracy rebels in Syria
Sep 2016: Uzbekistan's president Islam Karimov dies and is succeeded by prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev
Sep 2016: The Russian-Syrian coalition commits war crimes during a month-long aerial bombing campaign of opposition-controlled Aleppo in Syria
Oct 2016: Russian-backed rebel commander Arsen "Motorola" Pavlov is assassinated in Eastern Ukraine
Oct 2016: Gerhard Schroeder, former German chancellor, is appointed chairman of Russia's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project
Oct 2016: Odessa's governor Mikheil Saakashvili and Odessa's police chief Giorgi Lortkipanidze resign accusing Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko of backing corrupt officials
Nov 2016: Donald Trump is elected president of the USA with help from Russia
Dec 2016: More than 1,000 Russian athletes doped in a state-sponsored doping program
Dec 2016: 62 people die in the Siberian city of Irkutsk after drinking surrogate alcohol made with a bath lotion
Dec 2016: Following protests in Turkey over Russian support for Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a Turkish policeman kills Russia's ambassador to Turkey
Dec 2016: Turkey and Russia broker a truce in Syria bypassing the USA
Dec 2016: Russia and Cuba sign a sweeping pact on defense and technology cooperation.
2017: Russian trolls on social media spread the conspiracy theory that AIDS was designed by Robert Gallo (the Us scientist who discovered the HIV)
Feb 2017: Russia's main opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, is found guilty of embezzlement and barred from running in the presidential election
Feb 2017: Russian-backed rebel commander Mikhail "Givi" Tolstykh is assassinated
Feb 2017: Uzbekistan releases journalist Muhammad Bekjanov after 18 years of detention for insulting the former dictator
Mar 2017: Russia's opposition leader in exile Denis Voronenkov is assasinated in Ukraine
Apr 2017: 15 people are killed by a bomb placed in the St Petersburg metro by a Muslim terrorist
Mar 2017: Kazakhstan-based activists Qydyrali Oraz and Serikzhan Bilash (a naturalized Kazakh citizen born in the Chinese region of Xinjiang) found the organization Atajurt to protect ethnic Kazakhs detained in Chinese concentration camps
Jun 2017: Opposition politician Alexei Navalny is arrested during nationwide anticorruption protests
Aug 2017: Investigations reveal that Azerbaijan's government bribed members of the Council of Europe
Sep 2017: Gerhard Schroeder, former German chancellor, is appointed chairman of Russia's largest oil company, Rosneft
Oct 2017: Hundreds of Chinese-Kazakh refugees pressure Kazakhstan's government to protect persecuted Muslims China's Xinjiang province
Oct 2017: Sooronbai Jeenbekov is elected president of Kyrgyzstan
Oct 2017: Russia sends troops to the Central African Republic to help the government against the rebels
Dec 2017: The CIA helps Russia stop terror attacks by ISIS in St Petersburg
Dec 2017: Russia bans anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny from running in presidential elections
Mar 2018: Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, who defected to the West, is poisoned in Britain
Mar 2018: A fire in a Kemerovo shopping mall kills 64 people
Mar 2018: Russia arrests billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of racketeering
Apr 2018: Protests erupt in Armenia after Serzh Sargsyan steps down as president only to return as prime minister after having increased the power of the prime minister position, and protests led by opposition politician Nikol Pashinyan continue even after he resigns
May 2018: Nikol Pashinyan, an anti-corruption journalist, is appointed prime minister of Armenia
Aug 2018: Russian-backed rebel commander Alexander Zakharchenko is assassinated in Eastern Ukraine
Aug 2018: Aleksei Navalny publishes a report that details how Viktor Zolotov, Vladimir Putin’s former bodyguard before being promoted to direct the Russian National Guard, made a fortune with a scheme involving inflated food prices
Sep 2018: Viktor Zolotov challenges opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to a duel (Navalny cannot reply because he is in jail)
Sep 2018: Russia's state-controlled Rossiya Segodnya news agency and China's state-controlled China Media Group sign a cooperation agreement in Vladivostok to promote alternatives to Western liberal democracy
Sep 2018: A Russian military plane is show down by accident by its ally Syria while Israel is carrying out a bombing raid
Oct 2018: A student kills 21 people at a college in Crimea
Oct 2018: Russian airstrikes in Syria have killed more than 18,000 people over the past three years
Dec 2018: The French-born Salome Zurabishvili is elected president of Georgia, the first woman to become president
Jan 2019: The USA withdraws from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, accusing Russia of violating the treaty, and Russia withdraws too
Feb 2019: US businessman Michael Calvey, founder of the Moscow-based investment fund Baring Vostok, is arrested for fraud
Mar 2019: Kazakhstan's president Nursultan Nazarbayev resigns and is succeeded by Kassym Jomart-Tokayev
Mar 2019: Anti-Chinese activist Serikzhan Bilash, who exposed China's concentration camps for Muslims, is arrested in Kazakhstan
Mar 2019: Mass protests are held against Russia's plan to introduce tighter restrictions on the internet
Apr 2019: A comedian with no political experience, a Russian-speaking Jew, Volodymyr Zelensky, wins by a large margin Ukraine's presidential election against incumbent Petro Poroshenko, and Ukraine becomes the second nation in the world to have a Jewish president
May 2019: Three guards and 29 inmates are killed at a high-security prison in Tajikistan when ISIS inmates revolt
Jun 2019: A fire on a nuclear submarine on a top-secret mission kills 14 members of the crew
Jul 2019: Hundreds of people are arrested at anti-Putin protests led by activists such as Lyubov Sobol
Jul 2019: Christian Kern, former chancellor of Austria, is appointed to the board of Russia's state railway company
Aug 2019: An accident in Nyonoksa during the test of a nuclear-propelled missile over the White Sea kills five scientists and releases radiation
Aug 2019: The former Chechen rebel Zelimkhan Khangoshvili is assassinated in Germany
Oct 2019: Putin's government brands Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation a "foreign agent"
Nov 2019: Russia deploys 200 soldiers in Libya to boost warlord Khalifa Hifter
2020: Russia's population is 146 million
Jan 2020: Russia announces a national action plan on climate to take advantage of global warming
Jan 2020: Putin appoints Mikhail Mishustin as prime minister
Feb 2020: Russia Today and Russian trolls on social media spread a conspiracy theory that the covid-19 virus was developed in a US laboratory
May 2020: Russia has the second highest number of covid-19 infections in the world but still claims a very low death rate
May 2020: Russia's mercenary Wagner Group is fighting alongside Khalifa Hifter in Libya
Jun 2020: As Russia becomes one of the most infected countries in the world, several Russian cities refuse to hold parades demanded by Putin to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Soviet Union's victory in World War II
Jul 2020: Russians approve in a referendum a change to the constitution that will allow Putin to remain president until 2036
Jul 2020: Thousands of Russians protest in Khabarovsk and other cities the arrest of regional governor Sergei Furgal on fake murder charges
Jul 2020: Border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan leave several people dead
Jul 2020: Belarus arrests 32 Russians accusing them to be members of the Wagner mercenary group
Jul 2020: Iran accidentally shoots down a Ukrainian airplane killing 176 people
Jul 2020: Belarus arrests 33 fighters from the Russian-backed Wagner mercenary group
Aug 2020: Mass protests, led by Led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Maria Kolesnikova und Veronika Zepkalo, are held in Belarus against dictator Lukashenko who declares himself winner of rigged elections opposition blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky
Aug 2020: Top Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is poisoned and moves to Germany
Sep 2020: Russia arrests religious guru Sergei Torop, founder of the Church of the Last Testament in Siberia's Krasnoyarsk
Sep 2020: Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, invades Armenia-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh
Oct 2020: Irina Slavina, a dissident journalist commits suicide by setting herself on fire in Nizhny Novgorod
Oct 2020: Protesters and supporters of former president Almazbek Atambayev, who was jailed on charges of corruption, demonstrate against Kyrgyzstan's parliamentary elections and Sooronbai Jeenbekov resigns, the third time in 15 years that violent protests have toppled the president of Kyrgyzstan
Oct 2020: Russia puts Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on its wanted list of criminals
Nov 2020: Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia sign a peace deal over the Nagorno-Karabakh region after huge territorial gains by Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey
Dec 2020: Russian hackers working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service breach multiple US government agencies (the "SolarWind" hack)
Jan 2021: Top Russian dissident Alexei Navalny returns to Russia and is arrested, spawning protests around the country
2021: Prime minister Ukhnaa Khurelsukh wins Mongolia's presidential elections
Mar 2021: China and Russia announce a joint project to build a lunar space station
Apr 2021: Mass protests are held in several cities by Navalny supporters
Apr 2021: A leaked tape by Iran's foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif reveals that Iran entered the Syrian civil war at the behest of Russia and that Russia maneuvered to make sure that Iran would not make peace with the West
May 2021: Ilnaz Galyaviev kills seven children and two adults at a school in the Russian city of Kazan
May 2021: Belarus hijacks an international flight to arrest dissident Roman Protasevich, who is then forced to "confess" on television and to praise president Alexander Lukashenko
Jul 2021: Belarus opposition politician Viktor Babariko is sentenced to 14 years in jail
Jul 2021: Ukraine's president Zelenski appoints Valerii Zaluzhnyi as commander-in-chief of Ukraine's armed forces
Sep 2021: Protest organiser Maria Kolesnikova is jailed for 11 years in Belarus
Sep 2021: First-year student Timur Bekmansurov kills six people at the University of Perm
Oct 2021: Mikheil Saakashvili returns to Georgia after eight years to lead a protest but is arrested and sentenced to six years in jail for abuse of power
Nov 2021: Vladimir Putin and Jinping Xi are the only world leaders not to attend the G20 meeting in Roma
Nov 2021: 51 miners and rescuers die in a mining accident at Russia's Listvyazhnaya coal mine
Nov 2021: Migrants from the Middle East and Asia try to enter Poland from Belarus, causing a crisis between the two countries
Nov 2021: Russia's inflation surges to 8.4%
Dec 2021: Belarus jails opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky for 18 years
Dec 2021: Russia masses troops at the border with Ukraine
2021: Russia's population declines by more than half a million in 2021 due to the covid pandemic
2021: Russia supplies 40% of the European Union's natural gas
2021: Kazakhstan shifts from Cyrillic to Latin script
2021: Estonia's GDP per capita is $28000, Lithuania's GDP per capita is $23700, Latvia's is $21200, Russia's $12200 versus the euro zone's $44600 and the USA's $70200
Jan 2022: Mass protests take place in Kazakhstan over fuel prices and Russian troops help Kazakhstan's president Tokayev to quell the protests
Feb 2022: Russia deploys troops in Belarus for a joint exercise, recognizes eastern Ukraine as two independent state, Donetsk and Luhansk, and invades Ukraine
Mar 2022: Russia bans Western social media and foreign media websites, makes it a crime to spread "fake news" about the war, and most independent news media suspended operations
Mar 2022: Marina Ovsyannikova interrupts a live TV program to protest against the war in Ukraine
Mar 2022: Russia bombs the Mariupol theatre killing 300 civilians who were sheltering there
May 2022: Border fighting between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan leaves 56 people dead
Apr 2022: Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko who reported about the Mariupol Theater massacre is arrested for spreading "fake news"
Jun 2022: Russia and China open a cross-border bridge over the Amur River linking Blagoveshchensk and Heihe
Jun 2022: Russia’s current account surplus ($70 billion) is the largest ever
Jun 2022: Russian dissident Ilya Yashin is arrested
Aug 2022: The daughter of Aleksandr Dugin is assassinated in Russia in what was probably a failed attempt on Dugin's life
Sep 2022: Russia buys military drones from Iran
Sep 2022: The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project reports that the main target of Russian mercenaries in Central African Republic and Mali is civilians
Sep 2022: Kazakhstan renames Astana as Nur-Sultan
Sep 2022: A neo-nazi kills 15 people, including 11 children, at the school in the Russian city of Izhevsk
Sep 2022: Russia formally annexes occupied areas of Ukraine while thousands of young Russians escape Russia to avoid being drafted for the war
Nov 2022: A Dutch court sentences Igor Girkin/Strelkov, a former Russian FSB officer and Donbass militia commander, to life in prison for the 2014 downing of flight MH17
2022: The European Union’s GDP (without Britain) is $16.6 trillion versus Russia’s $2.2 trillion
2022: Georgia applies to join the European Union
Mar 2023: The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Russian president Vladimir Putin over war crimes committed in Ukraine
Mar 2023: Finland joins NATO, doubling the border of NATO with Russia
Apr 2023: Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza is sentenced to 25 years in prison
Jun 2023: Wagner's leader Prigozhin mutinies and marches on Moscow but then stops
Jul 2023: Russia arrests Igor Girkin/Strelkov, a Donbass militia commander turned-blogger and critic of Putin (wanted in the West for the downing of flight MH17)
Aug 2023: Russia launches its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years
Aug 2023: Wagner's founder and boss Yevgeny Prigozhin is killed in a plane crash, presumably due to a bomb
Sep 2023: Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, reconquers the whole of the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh causing the exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians to Armenia
Dec 2023: The European Union officially begins membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova and grants candidate status to Georgia
2023: There are 1.6 million Ukrainian refugees in Poland, 1.3 in Russia, one million in Germany, 547 thousand in Czechia, more than 200 thousand in Britain, and more than 150 thousand each in Spain, Bulgaria and Italy
Feb 2024: Russia declares Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas, Estonia's state secretary Taimar Peterkop and Lithuania's culture minister Simonas Kairys "wanted" for hostile actions against Russia and the "desecration of historical memory"
Feb 2024: Russian dissident Alexei Navalny dies in prison, presumably assassinated
Feb 2024: Andrey Morozov, a blogger who revealed the real war casualties of Russia, is found dead, apparently suicide
Mar 2024: The International Criminal Court issues arrest warrants for general Sergei Ivanovich Kobylash and admiral Viktor Nikolayevich Sokolov accused of war crimes in Ukraine
Mar 2024: Four citizens of Tajikistan, members of ISIS-Khorasan, a branch of ISIS based in Afghanistan, stage a terrorist attack in a Moscow concert hall that kills 133 people
Mar 2024: Russia labels writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya a foreign agent
May 2024: Georgia's parliament, controlled by the Georgian Dream Party of billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, overrides the president's veto to pass a Putin-style "foreign agents bill" that curbs dissent despite despite one year of popular protests
May 2024: Russia jails four top officials for bribery and Putin appoints a new defense minister, Andrei Belousov (basically confirming Progozhin's accusations)
Jun 2024: ISIS-affiliate Vilayat Kavkaz attack police, churches and synagogues in Russia's of Dagestan killing 20 people
Oct 2024: The pro-Russian Georgian Dream Party wins parliamentary elections in Georgia
Nov 2024: The Russian rouble hits a new record low of 113 against the US dollar (and 1 yuan is worth 15 roubles)
Nov 2024: Georgia's government pulls out of negotiations to become a member of the European Union and protests erupt

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