A look back at the main events in Russia in 2010, from the March suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, the Polish president’s plane crash in April and the... 25.12.2010, Sputnik International
A look back at the main events in Russia in 2010, from the March suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, the Polish president’s plane crash in April and the summer’s wildfires to FIFA’s decision in December to make Russia the host of the 2018 World Cup.
A look back at the main events in Russia in 2010, from the March suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro, the Polish president’s plane crash in April and the summer’s wildfires to FIFA’s decision in December to make Russia the host of the 2018 World Cup.
The abnormal heat-wave that hit Russia in summer 2010 caused harvest failures and fierce wildfires that raged, in waves, across the country. Dozens of people were killed and thousands of homes were burnt to the ground.
Summer 2010 saw a dozen new temperature records set. Environment experts say it will take nature many years to heal the scars left by the hundreds of wildfires.
The year 2010 will be remembered for a noticeable increase in popular engagement in Russian public life. The planned highway construction through the Khimki Forest was one of the high-profile issues in the outgoing year.
In the face of continuing protests by local residents and environmentalists, who used all means possible to stop trees being felled to make way for the highway, in August 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev instructed the government to suspend all construction work and hold additional public and expert discussions. The government eventually decided to go ahead and build the highway through the Khimki Forest but with concessions to the environmentalists, including significant compensation for the environmental damage caused.
On March 29, the first terrorist acts to hit the Russian capital for over five years shook Moscow’s metro. It was during the morning rush hour when two female suicide bombers, about half an hour apart from each other, detonated the bombs they were carrying at the Lubyanka and Park Kultury metro stations. The explosions killed 40 and injured about 150. Thousands of people were trapped in the metro and traffic around the entrances to the metro stations was brought to a halt. Photo: victims of the terrorist attack at the Park Kultury metro station being evacuated.
On April 8, 2010, the presidents of Russia and the United States signed the New START treaty in Prague that was meant to become one of the key pillars of a modern global security system. After concerted efforts, U.S. President Barack Obama managed to persuade the Senate to ratify the document, which it did on December 23.
The main event of April 2010 was the crash of Polish President Lech Kaczynski’s airplane at Smolensk. This tragedy triggered profound changes both inside Poland and in the country’s relations with its “unloved” neighbor to the east, Russia. President Kaczynski and members of Poland’s political and military leadership were heading to a commemoration for the Katyn tragedy. While attempting to land in thick fog, the plane collided with the tree-tops and crashed.
The issue of Katyn, where the Soviet secret police (NKVD) massacred thousands of Polish officers before the Great Patriotic War, has long been a difficult area in Russia-Poland relations. In 2010, the Russian government revealed documents relating to the massacred Polish officers and passed materials from the criminal case over to Poland. During his visit to Warsaw in December, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev promised the Katyn case would be comprehensively investigated and suggested it was time to turn a new page in Russian-Polish relations. Photo: December 6, 2010. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski during an official welcome ceremony at the presidential palace.
The federal government continued to replace governors in 2010. Replacements were appointed for several heavyweight regional heads, in office since the early 1990s, under Boris Yeltsin’s presidency. The heads of three Russian republics stepped down while the influential Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov refused to resign and was subsequently fired.
The end of 2010 brought Russia a spectacular and quite unexpected victory, when it won the bid to host the FIFA 2018 World Cup, beating strong challenges from England and Spain and Portugal.
In late June 2010, newspapers delighted in extensive coverage of the detention of 10 people in the United States on allegations of spying for Russia. According to U.S. authorities, these arrests were the result of a long-running investigation by the FBI and related agencies. But it turned out later that a high-ranking Russian intelligence officer blew the agents’ cover. Photo: the community where the journalist Vicky Pelaez and professor Juan Lazaro, accused of espionage, lived.
At an August meeting on amendments to the Law on Militia, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev put forward a proposal to rename the country’s law enforcement agency, currently “militsia” or militia, as “politsia” – police. On December 10, the State Duma passed the bill in the first reading. The bill entails tougher qualifications for police officers, strips the Interior Ministry of some extra functions and abolishes the deeply flawed system of quotas for solving crimes in assessing police performance.
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