| January 2012 |
- mo
- tu
- we
- th
- fr
- sa
- su

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours
Add commentsTwenty years ago, in January 1991, the tragic events in the Baltic region triggered a countdown to the end of the Soviet Union. The nuclear superpower that once dominated half the world ceased to exist within a year.
1
About 70 new rocket and missile systems will be tested at Russia’s Kapustin Yar test range in 2012, an increase of 150 percent from last year, a Defense Ministry spokesman said on Friday.
Investigators in the northern Russian port of Arkhangelsk have charged in absentia Estonia's former spy chief, Eerik-Niiles Kross, with organizing the hijacking of the cargo ship Arctic Sea in 2009, a spokesman for the regional Investigative Committee, Yury Shperling said on Friday.
A retiree in the Udmurtia region of the western Urals has alerted police after finding scores of Ak-47 assault rifles in crates he bought for firewood, police said.
2
Russia’s acquittal of the son of Tajikistan's railway boss, convicted for drug trafficking, is not linked to the release of a Russian pilot jailed in Tajikistan, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
Russian pilot Vladimir Sadovnichy and his Estonian colleague Alexei Rudenko were sentenced to eight and a half years in jail in Tajikistan for smuggling and border violations.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Friday fired Arkhangelsk Region governor Ilya Mikhalchuk, whom he had earlier reprimanded over problems in the region’s public utilities sector.
U.S. claims to the Schneerson library are provocative and spoil cultural ties with Russia as the sacred Jewish books are the unalienable property of the country, Russian Culture Minister Alexander Avdeyev said on Friday.
There will be no more major personnel changes in the Kremlin staff until the new head of state is inaugurated, presidential chief of staff Sergei Ivanov said on Friday.
The man who killed a Russian journalist in 2001 will not face trial because the statute of limitations for the crime has expired, a police spokesperson said.
Oil production of Russia's largest private oil company, LUKoil, fell 5.5 percent to 90.7 million tons from 96 million tons last year according to preliminary data, the company said on Friday.
Russian analysts are divided over the future of ties with Washington following the arrival of the new U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said on Friday he was sure there would be no new "gas war" between Russia and Ukraine.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday attended the funeral of a legendary World War II Soviet agent, Gevork Vartanyan, who is believed to have saved the lives of Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt during the Tehran Conference in 1943.
Authorities in Moscow have said they will not force schoolchildren to sit for tests during the next anti-government demonstration next month.
Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba said on Friday he is planning to “review” the disputed Kuril Islands, known as the Northern Territories in Japan, from aboard a patrol boat, as well as from Hokkaido Island.
Support for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin grew by 6 percentage points to 48 percent in the past few weeks, the state-run pollster VTsIOM said on Friday.
1
Russia will double the number of foreign monitors at its presidential election in March compared with the last presidential poll in 2008, the country’s chief election official said on Friday.
Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov said on Friday he had collected the two million signatures required to get him registered as an independent presidential candidate for the March 4 elections.



