Fall of Berlin Wall to 2015

from Senate Hearing 114-130

This is a republication of the timeline read during Senate Hearing 114-130, titled “Russian aggression in Eastern Europe: Where does Putin go next after Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova?”

• Nov. 9, 1989: Berlin Wall falls.
• June 1991: Yeltsin wins first ever Russian presidential election.
• March 1997: Yeltsin appoints Boris Nemtsov first deputy Prime Minister.
• July 1998: Putin is appointed head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB).
• Nov. 20, 1998: Galina Starovoitova, a prominent liberal member of Russia’s Parliament, is shot to death in her St. Petersburg apartment.
• Sept.-Oct. 1999: Putin sends Russian troops back into Chechnya in the wake of a series of bomb explosions in Russia which are blamed on Chechen extremists.
• Dec. 31, 1999: Yeltsin resigns, Putin becomes acting President.
• May 12, 2000: Igor Domnikov, a newspaper special-projects editor whore ported on corruption in the Russian oil industry, is hit in the head and left lying unconscious in a pool of blood in his apartment building.
• July 26, 2000: Sergey Novikov, owner of an independent radio station that often criticized the provincial government, is shot four times in his apartment building in Smolensk
• Sept. 21, 2000: Iskandar Khatloni, a reporter for the Tajik-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, is attacked in his apartment by an ax-wielding assailant.
• Oct. 3, 2000: Sergey Ivanov, director of an independent television company, is shot five times in the head and chest in front of his apartment building.
• Nov. 21, 2000: Adam Tepsurgayev, a cameraman who covered the Chechen war, is shot dead.
• April 29, 2002: Valery Ivanov, editor-in-chief of a newspaper that exposed government corruption, is shot eight times in the head at point-blank range outside of his home.
• Aug. 21, 2002: Vladimir Golovlyov, a leader of the Liberal Russia faction in the lower house of Parliament, is shot dead in Moscow.
• April 17, 2003: Sergei Yushenkov, a member of the lower house of Russia’s Parliament and an outspoken critic of Putin, is shot to death outside of his Moscow apartment.
• June 2003: Russian Government cites financial reasons for axing last remaining nationwide independent TV channel.
• July 3, 2003: Yuri Shchekochikhin, a vocal opposition journalist, dies after falling ill with a mysterious disease.
• June 19, 2004: Nikolai Girenko, a prominent human rights defender, is shot dead in his home in St. Petersburg.
• July 9, 2004: Paul Klebnikov, the first editor of Forbes magazine’s Russian edition, is shot dead as he leaves his Moscow office.
• Sept. 14, 2006: Andrei Kozlov, the First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Central Bank who shut down banks accused of corruption, dies after he was shot outside of a Moscow sports arena.
• Oct. 7, 2006: Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist and fierce critic of the Kremlin, is shot and killed in her Moscow apartment building.
• Nov. 23, 2006: Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who was critical of Putin, died after being poisoned with radioactivepolonium-210.
• March 2, 2007: Ivan Safronov, a journalist who embarrassed the country’s military establishment with a series of exclusive stories, is found dead outside of his home.
• July 15, 2007: Marina Pisareva, deputy head of Bertelsmann AG’s Russian publishing house, is found stabbed to death in her home west of Moscow.
• Aug. 2008: Russia invades Georgia; Medvedev signs an order recognizing the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two breakaway regions in Georgia.
• Aug. 31, 2008: Magomed Yevloyev, owner of a popular news site that reported on human rights, dies from a gunshot wound to the head sustained while in police custody.
• Nov. 2008: Russian Parliament votes overwhelmingly in favor of a bill that would extend the next President’s term of office from 4 to 6years.
• Jan. 19, 2009: Stanslav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, and Anastasia Barburova, a young journalism student, are shot dead midday on a busy Moscow street.
• April 2009: Vyacheslav Yaroshenko, an editor at the newspaper Corruption and Crime, is beaten outside of his home; he passed away from his injuries weeks later.
• July 15, 2009: Natalia Estemirova, a prominent human rights journalist, is abducted from her home in Chechnya and shot dead.
• Nov. 16, 2009: Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who was jailed in revenge for his uncovering of massive tax fraud, dies in prison; Olga Kotovskaya, a TV journalist who critically reported on government leaders, dies after falling from a window.
• Dec. 15, 2011: Gadzhimurad Kamalov, founder and publisher of a Dagestani newspaper known for its editorial independence, is gunned down outside of his office.
• March 23, 2013: Boris Berezovsky, once the richest of the so-called oligarchs who dominated post-Soviet Russia and a close ally of Yeltsin who helped install Putin as President, is mysteriously found dead in his home outside of London.
• July 9, 2013: Akhmednabi Akhmednabiev, deputy chief editor of a Dagestani newspaper, dies after sustaining multiple gunshot wounds.
• Dec. 2013-Feb. 2014: Amidst large proreform protests in Ukraine, Putin offers to purchase $15 billion of Ukraine’s debt and to reduce the price of Russian gas supplies to Ukraine. Violent protests flare, and by 2/22/2014 Yanukovych had fled Kyiv.
• March 2014: President Putin signs a law formalizing Russia’s take over of Crimea from Ukraine.
• May 11, 2014: Pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk declare independence after unrecognized referendums.
• July 17, 2014: Malaysian flight MH17 is shot down and crashes near the town of Torez in Ukraine’s Donetsk region; 298 people die.
• July 31, 2014: Timur Kuashev, a journalist critical of Russian policy in Ukraine, goes missing and is later found dead.
• Sept. 5, 2014: Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels sign a truce in Minsk.
• Nov. 5, 2014: Alexei Devotchenko, a popular Russian actor and opposition activist, dies in unclear circumstances.
• Jan. 24, 2015: Russian-backed rebels launch an offensive in Mariupol, Ukraine, killing 30 people and wounding 102 others.
• Feb. 11-12, 2015: Germany and France broker Minsk II cease-firebetween Russia and Ukraine.
• Feb. 19, 2015: Ukrainian soldiers retreat from Debaltseve after 13are killed and 157 wounded.
• Feb. 27, 2015: Boris Nemtsov, a prominent critic of Putin’s war in Ukraine and a former Deputy Prime Minister under Yeltsin, is shot in the back four times by an unidentified attacker in a car as he crossed a bridge near the Kremlin.