| April 14, 2008 | -
Russia was considering sending monkeys to Mars.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 5, 2008 | -
Russian President Vladimir Putin crashed a gala on the last day of the NATO summit in Bucharest. “Let's be friends, guys,” he said.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| March 19, 2008 | -
Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that he is a Christian,
| Source:
The Telegraph
|
| February 22, 2008 | -
Kosovo, in a move supported by the United States and strongly opposed by Russia, declared its independence from Serbia. NATO sealed Kosovo's northern border, and Serbians looted designer clothes, shoes, and chocolates, and set fire to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| February 21, 2008 | - The United States claimed to have successfully shot down a disabled and toxic spy satellite; China and Russia said the action was actually an excuse to test anti-satellite missile systems.
| Source:
BBCnews.com
|
| January 31, 2008 | - Seventeen Russian tourists visiting a spa in the Caucasus were hospitalized after a nurse accidentally administered hydrogen-peroxide enemas.
| Source:
Unhealthy enemas put tourists in hospital
|
| December 12, 2007 | - President Vladimir Putin selected his protege Dmitry Medvedev to be the next president of the Russian Federation. “It's almost a monarchical succession,” said the director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites, adding that Putin has “nominated his adopted son.” Medvedev, a 42-year-old, 5'4" fan of the band Deep Purple, quickly said that he would make Putin his prime minister.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| November 25, 2007 | - Amateur investigators in Russia found the charred bones of two teenage children of Tsar Nicholas II murdered along with their father, mother, and three siblings by Bolshevik agents in 1918, dispelling the rumor that a Romanov prince or princess had escaped execution.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 18, 2007 | -
Vladimir Putin traveled to Iran and cautioned the United States against a military strike; President Bush responded by saying that democracy might not be in the “Russian DNA” and threatened World War III if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.
| Source 1:
The Guardian
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| October 18, 2007 | -
Vladimir Putin traveled to Iran and cautioned the United States against a military strike; President Bush responded by saying that democracy might not be in the “Russian DNA” and threatened World War III if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.
| Source 1:
The Guardian
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| September 17, 2007 | -
Russian president Vladimir Putin dissolved his government, appointing a little-known technocrat, Viktor Zubkov, as new Prime Minister.
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
CS Monitor
Source 3:
Moscow Times
|
| September 12, 2007 | - The governor of Ulyanovsk, Russia, urged everyone to skip work and make love.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo
|
| September 6, 2007 | - The first Starbucks opened in Russia,.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 12, 2007 | - The United States denied approving the Iraqi Interior Ministry's $39.7 million purchase of 105,000 Russian-made assault rifles from the Italian Mafia. A senior official of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which has backed Shiite death squads in the Shiite-Sunni civil war, said “most” of the Russian guns were meant for its police in the Sunni-majority Anbar province; Iraqi officials also complained that U.S. gun deliveries are slow.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 1, 2007 | -
Russia annexed the North Pole.
| Source:
|
| July 26, 2007 | -
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Britain of “colonial thinking” for demanding the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, who is suspected of murdering former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| July 8, 2007 | - President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin rode Segway scooters together.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 27, 2007 | - It was reported that orders given by Vice President Dick Cheney in 2001 to reverse the flow of waters in the Pacific Northwest, against rules set by the Endangered Species Act, left 77,000 salmon rotting on the shores of the Klamath River. The ensuing “commercial fishery failure” required $60 million in federal disaster aid to local fishermen. Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, where President George W. Bush and his father took him fishing. “Fishing,” said former President George H. W. Bush, “is good for the soul.”
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| June 4, 2007 | -
Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to point his country's missiles at Washington and Europe.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 30, 2007 | -
Hunters in Russia killed a rare wild Amur leopard; six remain at large.
| Source:
Daily Times
|
| April 22, 2007 | -
Boris Yeltsin died.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 22, 2007 | -
Russian peasants were refusing to collect their pensions because the payment slip barcodes contained Satanic symbols.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| February 9, 2007 | - Organized dog fighting was increasingly popular throughout central Russia. Stanislav Mikhailov, president of the All-Russian Association of Russian
Volkodavs (“wolf-killers”) said, “Only people who have not seen it, and do not understand it, dislike this.”
| Source:
NY Times
|
| February 1, 2007 | - Hospital staff in Yekaterinburg, Russia, were gagging crying babies.
| Source:
BBC
|
| January 9, 2007 | -
Vladimir Putin threatened to cut Russia's
oil production.
| Source:
Business Week
|
| December 1, 2006 | - Poisons were felling Russians around the globe.
| Source:
This is London
|
| November 25, 2006 | - In London, Col. Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB agent, died several weeks after being poisoned with polonium 210, a rare isotope that is used in nuclear bombs and moon buggies. Investigators fear that Litvinenko, who accused Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination, may have spread radiation to his wife and son as they hugged and kissed him on his deathbed.
| Source 1:
Sky News
Source 2:
Sun (U.K.)
Source 3:
Daily Mail
|
| October 25, 2006 | -
Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed a failure to adopt a “proper tone” in diplomatic negotiations with North Korea for the current weapons crisis.
| Source:
United Press International
|
| October 16, 2006 | - In New York City, CBGB closed, but the Russian Tea Room will reopen.
| Source 1:
AP via USA Today
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2006 | -
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who criticized Russia's Chechnya policy, was found shot to death in an elevator.
| Source:
InterFax
|
| September 29, 2006 | - A Russian tabloid praised President Vladimir Putin for sprucing up his wardrobe.
| Source:
Baltimore Sun via Seattle Times
|
| September 14, 2006 | -
Russia said that it could send Madonna into space as early as 2009.
| Source:
Russia-InfoCentre
|
| August 28, 2006 | - In Russia a participant in a sex-doll
river-rafting
race was disqualified for sexually abusing his rafting apparatus. “I think,” said the man's friend, “it was an expression of his great desire to win.”
| Source:
MOSNEWS.COM
|
| August 15, 2006 | -
Russia sent text messages to Chechen rebels telling them to stop fighting.
| Source:
St. Petersburg Times
|
| July 18, 2006 | - The United States and Russia agreed to set quotas for how many polar bears they would kill each year.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| July 10, 2006 | -
Airliners crashed in Russia and Pakistan, killing hundreds.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| July 6, 2006 | - President Vladimir Putin of Russia explained that he had recently kissed a young boy on the stomach because he “wanted to stroke him like a cat.”
| Source:
Agence France-Presse
|
| June 21, 2006 | - In Baghdad a car bomb detonated next to an ice cream shop, killing at least three people of indeterminate age, and insurgents beheaded two Russian diplomats and shot another.
| Source:
Houston Chronicle via Google News
|
| June 7, 2006 | - President Vladimir Putin of Russia had lunch with Henry Kissinger, who said afterward that he has confidence in “Russian evolution.” “What if my grandmother had certain sexual attributes?” Putin asked a reporter. “Then she would would be my grandfather.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 6, 2006 | -
Donald Rumsfeld, the American secretary of defense, traveled to Vietnam, where he complained that Russia is a bully and China is secretive; he also observed that when Vietnam's first university was founded in 1070 American Indians were still living in mud huts. “That's impressive,” he said.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 28, 2006 | - A gay-rights rally in Moscow turned violent when activists were attacked and beaten by anti-gay protesters. "Moscow," shouted the protesters, "is not Sodom!"
| Source:
Fox News
|
| May 24, 2006 | - Four Russian soldiers were killed in Chechnya.
| Source:
MosNews.com
|
| May 3, 2006 | - A plane flying from Armenia to Russia crashed into the Black Sea, killing 113 people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 18, 2006 | - Greenpeace estimated that over the last 20 years 93,000 people have died from the fallout from the Chernobyl
nuclear disaster.
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| March 3, 2006 | - An Italian commission found that the Soviet Union organized the shooting of Pope John Paul II in 1981.
| Source:
|
| February 24, 2006 | - In Moscow the roof of a market collapsed, killing at least 56 people.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| February 19, 2006 | - Riots over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad continued around the world. In Nigeria 16 people were killed in rioting and 11 churches were burned; in Libya at least 10 people were killed; and in Pakistan at least 5 people were killed. In Volgograd, Russia, officials closed the city newspaper after it published a cartoon that showed Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, and Buddha watching TV together. Fifteen thousand people protested the cartoons in London. “We have to speak up,” said a Muslim demonstrator, “to prevent something like the Holocaust from happening.”
| Source 1:
CNN.com
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| February 3, 2006 | -
Russia was facing a vodka shortage.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| January 30, 2006 | -
Vladimir Putin said that Russia has missiles that zigzag.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| January 23, 2006 | -
Russia accused the U.K. of spying in Moscow, and offered a data-transmitting fake spy rock as evidence.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 22, 2006 | - It was cold in Russia. People were smearing goose fat on their bodies to stop frostbite, and near Moscow zookeepers fed an Indian elephant a bucket of vodka to keep it warm; the elephant then went on a rampage, tore radiators from a wall, and calmed down only after it was given a hot shower.
| Source 1:
HindustanTimes.com
Source 2:
The Toronto Star
|
| January 11, 2006 | - A skinhead shouting “I will kill you” stabbed eight people at a Moscow
synagogue.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| January 3, 2006 | -
Russia shut down a natural-gas pipeline to Ukraine; as a result, natural-gas supplies were diminished in Hungary, France, Italy, Poland, and Germany.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| December 4, 2005 | -
Russia confirmed plans to sell $1 billion worth of surface-to-air missiles and other weapons hardware to Iran.
| Source:
The Sydney Morning Herald
|
| December 1, 2005 | - In Russia a pack of squirrels attacked and, according to an eyewitness, “literally gutted” a large dog that was barking at them. When humans approached the squirrels ran away, some carrying flesh.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| October 17, 2005 | - A Chechen warlord took credit for coordinating attacks on the Russian city of Nalchik, claiming that 41 militants and 140 Russian troops were killed in the attack. Russia said that 94 militants, 33 Russian troops, and 12 civilians were killed in the attack.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| September 9, 2005 | -
Russia announced that it will build a small floating nuclear power station in the White Sea.
| Source:
MOSNews.com
|
| August 7, 2005 | - And North Korea would not make changes to its nuclear program, despite the efforts of China, Japan, Russia, the United States, and South Korea.
| Source:
VOA.com
|
| July 27, 2005 | -
Russia offered to send a rich person to orbit the moon in exchange for $100 million.
| Source:
The Guardian
|
| May 30, 2005 | - Seven hundred thousand chickens expired during a power blackout in Moscow that cut off their ventilation; not long afterward the dead chickens started exploding.
| Source:
Pravda
|
| May 19, 2005 | - In Bolotnikovo, Russia, a lake disappeared.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| May 9, 2005 | -
President Bush attended a display of Soviet pageantry in Russia.
| Source:
New York Timesimes.com
|
| April 6, 2005 | - Tom DeLay was accused of paying his wife and daughter $500,000 from funds controlled by his political-action committee. He was also accused of taking lobbyist-funded trips to Russia, Saipan, and Scotland.
| Source 1:
ABC News
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 31, 2005 | - Olga, the first Siberian
tiger ever fitted with a radio collar, was killed by poachers.
| Source:
Eurekalert!
|
| March 28, 2005 | - A Russian court found a museum director and an artist guilty of creating blasphemous
art and fined them $3,600 each. The piece in question depicted Jesus on a Coca-Cola advertisement with the words “this is my blood.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 23, 2005 | -
Russian doctors grew a penis on a man's arm.
| Source:
Ananova.com
|
| March 23, 2005 | -
Venezuela ordered 100,000 assault rifles from Russia; Donald Rumsfeld said that was too many.
| Source:
Sign On San Diego
|
| March 9, 2005 | -
Russian forces assassinated Aslan Maskhadov, the elected, internationally recognized leader of the Chechen movement.
| Source:
Christian Science Monitor
|
| February 28, 2005 | -
Russia agreed to sell nuclear fuel to Iran.
| Source:
LA Times
|
| February 2, 2005 | - Investing in Russian oil companies was nota good move.
| Source:
The Financial Times
|
| January 26, 2005 | - A group of Russian legislators demanded that Jewish organizations be investigated, and possibly closed down, for carrying out ritual killings and hate crimes against themselves.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| December 30, 2004 | - and awarded the Hero of Russia medal to Ramzan Kadyrov, a Chechen leader widely accused of kidnapping and torture.
| Source:
New York Ties
|
| December 29, 2004 | - The imprisoned founder of Russia's largest oil producer accused the government of stealing his empire.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 19, 2004 | -
Russia forced the Yukos oil conglomerate to auction off its largest subsidiary to a little-known company with suspected government ties in a sale that was widely interpreted as a way to punish Yukos's politically outspoken founder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is currently in jail.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 14, 2004 | -
Russian border guards discovered an underground "vodka pipeline" used to smuggle alcohol into Estonia,
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 3, 2004 | - At a Moscow airport Vladimir Putin told Ukraine's outgoing president that new run-off elections were unnecessary.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 3, 2004 | -
Russia blocked all exports from a breakaway region of Georgia because it did not support the candidate whom the region elected.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 28, 2004 | -
Russia's Federation Council ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2004 | - A Russian
nuclear power plant was shut down because of what was called a "minor mishap."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 1, 2004 | -
Russia's cabinet approved the Kyoto Protocol, and
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - The United Nations Security Council passed another resolution asking the Sudanese government to prevent its proxies from slaughtering people in Darfur (China, Algeria, Pakistan, and Russia abstained). The resolution, which for the first time formally invokes the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, says that the council will "consider" sanctions if the genocide continues.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 19, 2004 | - President Vladimir Putin of Russia responded to the recent terror attacks there by announcing plans for a radical restructuring of the Russian political system that would end the popular election of regional governors and district representatives in parliament.
| Source:
Lexington Herald-Leader
|
| September 5, 2004 | -
Chechen militants took more than 1,000 children and adults hostage at a school in southern Russia, though the Russian government lied at first and claimed that there were only 354 hostages; at least 338 died, half of whom were children, when security forces stormed the school.
| Source:
Washington Post, Reuters
|
| August 31, 2004 | - A suicide bomber blew herself up in a Moscow subway station, killing at least 10 people.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 30, 2004 | - People in Chechnya apparently elected Vladimir Putin's choice for president, though there was widespread evidence of fraud.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| August 28, 2004 | - Two Russian airliners were destroyed by suicide bombers.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| August 1, 2004 | -
Russian researchers from the Voronezh State Technological Academy said they had perfected a method for using cow blood as a high-protein dairy replacement in foods such as yogurt.
| Source:
Telegraph
|
| July 23, 2004 | -
Russian police broke up a summer camp for young thieves.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 7, 2004 | - Aslan Maskhadov, the Chechen rebel leader, claimed to be able to fight the Russians for another twenty years if necessary, and he threatened to kill the next president of Chechnya. "Whoever occupies this puppet's chair — his days are numbered."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 5, 2004 | - Nine people died when a bomb blew up in a market in southern Russia, near Kazakhstan.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 28, 2004 | -
Russia ordered its border guards to be nice.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| May 28, 2004 | - A Russian museum of erotica announced an exhibit featuring Grigory Rasputin's penis.
| Source:
Moscow News
|
| May 25, 2004 | - A Russian scientist died of Ebola fever.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| May 10, 2004 | -
Russian legislators hired a Siberian shaman to purge the parliament building of "negative energy."
| Source:
Ananova
|
| April 16, 2004 | -
Russia said that 605 people were kidnapped in Chechnya last year, and 253 were kidnapped in nearby regions.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 10, 2004 | - The head of Russia's Federal Security Service, formerly known as the KGB, was named head of the Russian Volleyball Association.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 8, 2004 | - A Russian scientist was sentenced to 15 years for selling unclassified material to a British company that Russian authorities claim was a CIA front.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 7, 2004 | - The president of Ingushetia, a Russian republic, survived an assassination attempt.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| April 3, 2004 | -
Russia's parliament agreed to amend a bill that would have banned almost all public demonstrations.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| April 3, 2004 | -
Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined NATO; Russia was unhappy about NATO forces creeping so close to its border.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| March 25, 2004 | -
Ukraine's minister of defense announced that quite a few missiles that were supposed to have been decommissioned after the fall of the Soviet Union were in fact lost. "Unfortunately strange things happen," he said. "We are currently looking for several hundred missiles."
| Source:
BBC
|
| March 2, 2004 | -
Russian religious leaders refused to permit Roman Catholics to attend a conference on religious tolerance.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 24, 2004 | -
Russian president Vladimir Putin fired his prime minister and most of his cabinet.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 9, 2004 | - Ivan Rybkin, a Russian presidential candidate who recently took out a full-page newspaper ad accusing President Vladimir Putin of being "the biggest oligarch in Russia," disappeared; a murder investigation was announced, and then it was cancelled.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 7, 2004 | - A bomb blew up on the Moscow subway.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 22, 2004 | -
Russian soldiers rescued 10 tons of beer kegs that became trapped under the ice of a frozen Siberian river; after divers from the Ministry of Emergency Situations failed to dislodge the kegs, a T-72 tank saved the day.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| December 10, 2003 | - U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz decreed that Canada, Germany, France, Russia, and other nations that opposed the conquest of Iraq will be ineligible for $18.6 billion in reconstruction contracts. The announcement was greeted with astonishment by the blacklisted countries; Russia said that it would now refuse to consider restructuring Iraq's $8 billion debt, and Canada said the decision would probably rule out further reconstruction aid.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| December 5, 2003 | - A Kremlin official announced that Russia will not ratify the Kyoto Protocol; the next day another official contradicted that pronouncement, which was followed on the third day by a negation of the denial that President Putin had in fact decided against the global-warming treaty.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| November 6, 2003 | -
Yukos Oil, the Russian company whose chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested last month, was being investigated for allegedly mistreating pigs and permitting rabbit "couplings [to] take place unsystematically."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| November 1, 2003 | - Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who is considered pro-business, said he was "deeply concerned" about the case, but experts agreed that most Russians hate the rich.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 28, 2003 | -
Russian financial markets dropped after police arrested the country's richest man, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos Oil, on charges of fraud and tax evasion.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 9, 2003 | - President Vladimir Putin rejected any comparisons between his regime and the Soviet Union: "To talk about a return to the Soviet times in connection with [Russian security officials] would be like talking about the times of McCarthy, referring to the ministry of homeland security in the United States."
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 7, 2003 | -
Russia's man in Chechnya won an overwhelming victory in the presidential election.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| October 2, 2003 | - A Russian electricity company was threatening to kidnap people's pets as a way to force delinquent customers to pay their bills.
| Source:
BBC
|
| October 1, 2003 | - A new study estimated that 160,000 people die as a result of global warming every year; President Vladimir Putin suggested that global warming could be good for Russians because they "would spend less money on fur coats and other warm things."
| Source:
Reuters
|
| October 1, 2003 | - Laura Bush told the Russians that American children's books teach children to be good Americans and that her children used to enjoy acting out "Hop on Pop" by Dr. Seuss.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| September 29, 2003 | - Vladimir Putin visited President Bush at Camp David; "Pootie-Poot," as he is known by the president, refused to cancel Russia's $800 million contract to build a commercial nuclear reactor for Iran.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 31, 2003 | - A decommissioned Russian
nuclear submarine sank in the Barents Sea.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 25, 2003 | - Three people died and 17 were injured in a bus bomb in Krasnodar, Russia.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 22, 2003 | - The Bush Administration was hoping that the bombing would persuade Europeans to send more troops to Iraq; the French were quite clear that this would require "sharing information and authority." Germany and Russia were also unwilling to allow their troops to serve under U.S. command.
| Source:
BBC
|
| August 2, 2003 | - A three-story hospital in southern Russia was destroyed by a truck bomb, allegedly the work of Chechen separatists; forty-one people were killed and scores wounded.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| August 1, 2003 | - A Russian man said he had Hitler's penis, and offered to sell it for $20,000.
| Source:
Ananova
|
| June 23, 2003 | -
Russia's Duma, the lower house of parliament, passed a bill that would allow the government to shut down news organizations that publish "biased" election campaign coverage.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 2, 2003 | -
Bush gave Vladimir Putin a big hug and invited him to a sleepover at Camp David; Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder received perfunctory handshakes.
| Source:
Daily Telegraph
|
| May 1, 2003 | - The United States, the
United Nations,
Russia, and the European Union, acting collectively as "the Quartet," presented Israel and Palestine with the famous "road map" to peace that President Bush promised to reveal once the Palestinians acquired a prime minister independent of Yasir Arafat.
| |
| April 22, 2003 | -
Russian train conductors were hospitalized following a contest that involved smashing their heads repeatedly against a train window to determine who had the strongest forehead.
| |
