2002 in Russia

Incumbents

• President: Vladimir Putin
• Prime Minister: Mikhail Kasyanov

  Events

• 21 January - Commercial television station TV6 closed down by the Russian government.
• 8 February–24 February - Russia competes at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, United States, and wins 5 gold, 4 silver and 4 bronze medals.
• 12 May - An accident at the Baikonur Cosmodrome kills eight people and destroys a Buran spacecraft.
• 1 July - Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937 from Moscow to Barcelona in Spain collides with DHL Flight 611 over Überlingen, Germany with 71 fatalities, mostly Russians.
• 25 September - Vitim event: a large meteorite crashes in the Vitim River basin in Siberia.
• 23 October - Moscow theater hostage crisis: 40 Chechen separatists seize a theatre in Moscow taking 850 hostages.
• 26 October - Moscow theater hostage crisis: Russian special forces storm the theatre killing the Chechens and over 100 hostages.

  Notable births

• 16 April - Dayana Kirillova, singer

  Notable deaths

• 8 January - Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 19 September - Sergei Bodrov Jr., actor