RIA Novosti presents 2009’s ten most important domestic political events, as chosen by its correspondents
The massacre in a supermarket in southern Moscow in late April, where police Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded six late-night shoppers, led to resignation of several top-ranking officers in the Moscow police. As a result of Yevsyukov’s killing spree, Moscow’s top police officer lost his post: Colonel-General Vladimir Pronin had been Moscow’s police chief since 2001
The three parliamentary parties which regard themselves as the opposition to the ruling party, United Russia, which has a constitutional majority in the State Duma, walked out of parliament protesting results of regional elections held on October 11 after they learned they lost to the party in power in them
President Dmitry Medvedev has introduced a new popular term: modernization. In his second state-of-the-nation address in parliament he said that the modernization of the country was crucial for its survival and that it should not be delayed
A series of major traffic accidents in summer which killed 30 and injured 60 Russians in less than a week in July, has exposed serious problems in traffic regulation, road condition and insufficient driver responsibility
State officials’ income declarations made the most popular online reading last summer. In May, presidential anticorruption decrees came into force, stipulating the procedure for government officials and their family members to declare their incomes and property. The policy was aimed at reducing corruption which President Dmitry Medvedev declared one of his presidential missions
Alexander Podrabinek, journalist, human rights activist and famous Soviet dissident, in September 2009 published an editorial on http://www.ej.ru about a Moscow restaurant, Anti-Soviet, changing its name under pressure from “Soviet veterans” who said it was "offensive." His article, in which he accused the veterans for their attitude, provoked a harsh response from a number of public associations. Nashi, a nationalist youth movement that began under former President Vladimir Putin, started picketing the journalist’s house
With over two years still to go before the next presidential elections, incumbent President Dmitry Medvedev and former President Vladimir Putin, who previously held the post for eight years, announced their presidential ambitions: one of them will possibly run in the 2012 elections, but not both. When asked during his eighth televised Q&A session whether or not he would run, Putin said he was still undecided. “I will think about it. I have enough time for this. In my view, everyone should do what he or she must, and work effectively. We will make decisions on the 2012 election based on the situation in the economy and in the social sphere. But this is 2009,” he said
Russia’s biggest party, United Russia, which has a constitutional majority in the State Duma, the Russian parliament’s lower house, and controls all the regional legislatures, announced its long-term strategy and ideology at its 11th congress
Russia’s armed forces can now be used to fight piracy and ensure maritime safety
Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan have signed a Customs Union Agreement, which so far is the deepest reach of integration among the post-Soviet republics. The European Union also started with a common customs zone project in the mid twentieth century
