2002 – Chechen militants take over 700 individuals hostage in a Moscow theater and demand the quick withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Russian troops pump sleeping fuel into the constructing and storm it. Over 100 civilian hostages die because of the sleeping fuel.
2004 – Chechen militants take over 1,100 individuals, together with 770 kids, hostage in Beslan, North Ossetia, demanding Russia's withdrawal from Chechnya. Russian forces storm the college buildings and finish the siege, killing 334 individuals, together with 186 kids, in addition to 31 of the attackers.
2005 – Putin calls the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century.”
2006 – Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist who uncovered corruption within the Russian military and its conduct in Chechnya, is killed.
2008 – Russo-Georgian Battle: Tensions between Georgia and Russia escalate right into a full-scale navy battle as Georgia makes an attempt to retake the separatist area of South Ossetia by pressure following lower-level clashes with Russian-backed rebels.
Russian forces counterattack and push Georgian troops out of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. After 5 days of preventing, either side signal a peace settlement brokered by France. Russia acknowledges each South Ossetia and Abkhazia as unbiased states – only a few different nations do.
2014 – Russia conquers the Ukrainian area of Crimea after which annexes it. Russian-backed separatists take management of the Luhansk and Donbas areas of japanese Ukraine and declare independence. Preventing between Ukrainian and separatist forces continues till dispersed by the Russian invasion in 2022.
2015 – Russia begins an armed intervention in Syria to help ally President Bashar al-Assad.