2002 – Chechen militants take over 700 people hostage in a Moscow theatre, demanding the immediate withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Russian forces pump sleeping gas into the building and storm it. Over 100 civilian hostages die from the effects of the sleeping gas.
2004 – Chechen militants take over 1,100 people, including 770 children hostage in Beslan, North Ossetia, demanding Russian withdrawal from Chechnya. Russian forces storm the school buildings, ending the siege, during which 334 people are killed, including 186 children, as well as 31 of the attackers.
2005 – Putin characterises the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the Twentieth Century”.
2006 – Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed corruption in the Russian army and its conduct in Chechnya, is killed.
2008 – Russo-Georgian War: Tensions between Georgia and Russia escalate into a full-blown military conflict after Georgia tries to retake the separatist region of South Ossetia by force following lower-level clashes with Russian-backed rebels.
Russian forces counter-attack and push Georgian troops out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After five days of fighting, the two sides sign a French-brokered peace agreement. Russia recognises both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states – very few other countries do.
2014 – Russia seizes Ukrainian region of Crimea and then annexes it. Russian-backed separatists take control of the Luhansk and Donbas regions in eastern Ukraine and declare independence. Fighting between Ukrainian and separatist forces continues until it is subsumed by Russia’s invasion in 2022.
2015 – Russia begins armed intervention in Syria to support ally President Bashar al-Assad.
Source link : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17839672
Author :
Publish date : 2024-03-25 07:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
