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The Story of

Russia

1223 – 2024

Country in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia, the largest in the world by area

  1. Demyansk Pocket

    20 May 1942 – 25 May 1942

    The Demyansk Pocket (German: Kessel von Demjansk; Russian: Демя́нский котёл) was the name given to the pocket of German troops encircled by the Red Army around Demyansk, south of Leningrad, on World War II's Eastern Front. The pocket existed mainly from 8 February to 21 April 1942.

  2. Battle of Stalingrad

    23 August 1942 – 2 February 1943

    The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II in which Nazi Germany and its Axis allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in southern Russia. Marked by intense close-quarters combat and heavy civilian losses during aerial bombardment, the battle is considered the largest and deadliest urban battle in military history and the deadliest battle in World War II. By the end of the fighting, the German 6th Army had been destroyed, the 4th Panzer Army had suffered severe losses, and Army Group B was routed.

  3. Case Blue

    24 November 1942

    Case Blue (German: Fall Blau) was the Wehrmacht's plan for the 1942 summer offensive in southern Russia between 28 June and 24 November 1942, during World War II. The objective was to capture the oil fields of Baku (Azerbaijan SSR), Grozny and Maikop, to enable the Germans to obtain fuel and also to deny it to the Soviet Union, bringing about the complete collapse of the Soviet war effort. After Operation Barbarossa failed to destroy the Soviet Union as a political and military threat the previous year, Adolf Hitler recognized that Germany was now locked in a war of attrition and he was…

  4. Battle of Smolensk

    1943

    The second Smolensk operation (code naming "Suvorov"; 7 August – 2 October 1943) was a Soviet strategic offensive operation conducted by the Red Army as part of the Summer-Autumn Campaign of 1943. Staged almost simultaneously with the Lower Dnieper Offensive (13 August – 22 September), the offensive lasted two months and was led by General Andrei Yeremenko, commanding the Kalinin Front, and Vasily Sokolovsky, commanding the Western Front.

  5. Operation Spark

    12 January 1943 – 30 January 1943

    Operation Iskra (Russian: операция Искра, lit. 'Operation Spark'), a Soviet military operation in January 1943 during World War II, aimed to break the Wehrmacht's siege of Leningrad. Planning for the operation began shortly after the failure of the Sinyavino Offensive.

  6. Battle of Prokhorovka

    12 July 1943

    The Battle of Prokhorovka was fought on 12 July 1943 near Prokhorovka, 87 kilometres (54 mi) southeast of Kursk, in the Soviet Union, during the Second World War. Taking place on the Eastern Front, the engagement was part of the wider Battle of Kursk and occurred when the 5th Guards Tank Army of the Soviet Red Army attacked the II SS-Panzer Corps of the German Waffen-SS in one of the largest tank battles in history.

  7. Battle of the Caucasus

    9 October 1943 – October 1943

    The Battle of the Caucasus was a series of Axis and Soviet operations in the Caucasus as part of the Eastern Front of World War II. On 25 July 1942, German troops captured Rostov-on-Don, opening the Caucasus region of the southern Soviet Union to the Germans and threatening the oil fields beyond at Maykop, Grozny, and ultimately Baku. Two days prior, Adolf Hitler had issued a directive to launch an operation into the Caucasus named Operation Edelweiß.

  8. Moscow Armistice

    19 September 1944

    The Moscow Armistice was signed between Finland on one side and the Soviet Union and United Kingdom on the other side on 19 September 1944, ending the Continuation War. The Armistice restored the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940, with a number of modifications.

  9. 1960 U-2 incident spy aircraft

    1 May 1960

    On 1 May 1960, a United States U-2 spy plane, having taken off from Peshawar in Pakistan, was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces in Sverdlovsk, Russia. It was conducting photographic aerial reconnaissance inside Soviet territory while being flown by American Central Intelligence Agency pilot Francis Gary Powers, as it was hit by a surface-to-air missile.

  10. Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany

    12 September 1990

    The Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (German: Vertrag über die abschließende Regelung in Bezug auf Deutschland), more commonly referred to as the Two Plus Four Agreement (Zwei-plus-Vier-Vertrag), is an international agreement that allowed the reunification of Germany in October 1990. It was negotiated in 1990 between the 'two', the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in addition to the Four Powers which had occupied Germany at the end of World War II in Europe: France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

  11. 1991 Soviet Union referendum

    17 March 1991

    A referendum on the future of the Soviet Union was held on 17 March 1991 across the Soviet Union. It was the only national referendum in the history of the Soviet Union, although it was boycotted by authorities in six of the fifteen Soviet republics.

  12. START I

    31 July 1991

    START I (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) was a bilateral treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union on the reduction and the limitation of strategic offensive arms. The treaty was signed on 31 July 1991 and entered into force on 5 December 1994.

  13. Belovezh Accords

    8 December 1991

    The Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (officially), or unofficially the Minsk Agreement and best known as the Belovezha Accords, is the agreement declaring that the Soviet Union (USSR) had effectively ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place as an organization created by the same Union Republics. The documentation was signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus on 8 December 1991, by leaders of three of the four republics (except for the defunct Transcaucasian SFSR) which had…

  14. 1993 Russian constitutional crisis

    1993

    In September and October 1993, following the increasingly visible tensions after December 1992, a constitutional crisis arose in the Russian Federation from a conflict between the then Russian president Boris Yeltsin and the country's parliament. Yeltsin performed a self-coup, dissolving parliament and instituting a presidential rule by decree system.

  15. Aeroflot Flight 593

    23 March 1994

    Aeroflot Flight 593 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Sheremetyevo International Airport, Moscow, Russia, to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong. On 23 March 1994, the aircraft operating the route, an Airbus A310 flown by Aeroflot, crashed into the Kuznetsk Alatau mountain range in Kemerovo Oblast, killing all 63 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

  16. First Chechen War

    11 December 1994 – 31 August 1996

    The First Chechen War, also referred to as the First Russo-Chechen War, was a conflict between the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria and the Russian Federation from 1994 to 1996. The conflict ended in a peace treaty that saw Russian forces withdraw from the territory only for them to invade again three years later, sparking the Second Chechen War of 1999–2009.

  17. 1998 Russian financial crisis

    1998

    The Russian financial crisis (also called the ruble crisis or the Russian flu) began in Russia on 17 August 1998. It resulted in the Russian government and the Russian Central Bank devaluing the ruble and defaulting on its debt.

  18. Monetary reform in Russia, 1998

    1 January 1998

    Russia launched a monetary reform on January 1, 1998. Preparation started in August 1997.

  19. Second Chechen War

    26 August 1999 – 16 April 2009

    The Second Chechen War (Russian: Втора́я чече́нская война́, Chechen: Шолгӏа оьрсийн-нохчийн тӏом, lit. 'Second Russian-Chechen War') took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009. In August 1999, Islamists from Chechnya infiltrated Dagestan in Russia.

  20. Beslan school siege

    September 2004 – 3 September 2004

    The Beslan school siege, also referred to as the Beslan terror attack, the Beslan tragedy, or the Beslan massacre, was an Islamist terrorist attack that occurred from 1 September 2004 to 3 September 2004 in Beslan, North Ossetia, Russia. It lasted three days, and involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages, including 777 children.