RIAN News Service looks back at the main events of the outgoing year; below starts a month-by-month review of 2009, beginning with January:

January 1

* Russia cuts off natural gas supplies to Ukraine, but increases shipments to other European states

January 7

* Russian energy giant Gazprom halts gas supplies to Ukraine for transit to Europe

January 9

* Russian and British shareholders of Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP sign a deal to complete the process of settling their conflict started in September 2008

January 10

* Russia and the European Union sign a protocol to set up an international commission to control the transit of Russian natural gas through Ukraine

January 13

* Russian energy giant Gazprom gives the go-ahead to resume gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine

January 15
 
* Russian investigators close their probe into the 1918 murder of the last tsar and his family, and the identification of their remains discovered in the Urals in 1991 and 2007

* North Korean leader Kim Jong-il taps his third son to be his successor and sends his nomination to the leadership of the ruling party

January 19

* Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer for the family of a Chechen woman murdered in 2000 by Russian army colonel Yury Budanov, and Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasia Baburova are shot dead in downtown Moscow

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signs a decree banning exports of military and dual purpose products to Georgia

* Russian energy giant Gazprom and Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz signs a contract on Russian gas supplies to Ukraine for 2009-2019

January 20

* Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the U.S. in Washington, becoming the country's first African-American head of state

January 21

* Israel completes its troop pullout from Gaza more than three weeks after the start of its assault on the coastal enclave

January 27

* Metropolitan Kirill is elected head of the Russian Orthodox Church, becoming the 16th Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia