2006

Former Russian security service officer Alexander Litvinenko, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin living in exile in London, dies of polonium poisoning.

• Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who was a critic of Russia's policies in Chechnya, is murdered

• Russia authorizes the FSB to carry out assassinations abroad

• Putin signs law giving authorities extensive new powers to monitor the activities of non-governmental organisations and suspend them if they are found to pose an alleged threat to national security.

• Alexander Koptsev burst into Bolshaya Bronnaya Synagogue in Moscow and stabbed eight people with a knife.

• Major ethnic tensions between Russians and Caucasians took place in Kondopoga.

• The crisis in Georgia–Russia relations resulted in the deportation of Georgians from Russia.

• Russia imposes sanctions and expels hundreds of Georgians whom it accuses of being illegal immigrants.

• Home–made bomb exploded in Moscow at the Cherkizovsky Market, which is frequented by foreign merchants.

• Andrei Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Central Bank, who strove to stamp out money laundering (basically acting on analyses like that of reporter Klebnikov), the highest-ranking reformer in Russia, is shot and killed in Moscow

• 2003-2013 Yukos oil boss and prominent liberal Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested on charges of tax evasion and fraud, an early casualty of President Putin's campaign to drive Yeltsin-era 'oligarchs' out of politics. In 2005 he is sentenced to nine years imprisonment, and is pardoned and goes into exile in 2013.

• 1999-2009 Second Chechen War, Hundreds of civilians are killed and tens of thousands are left homeless as civilian targets are attacked.

• 2000- Chechen Insurgency

• 1948- Involvement to Arab-Israeli Conflict

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