title: 2002 in Russia
text: # 2002 in Russia
  
  Events from the year 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.
  * 4 March – Good Night, Little Ones! airs its first episode on its current home, Telekanal Rossiya, still airing on the VGTRK today.
  * 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.
  * 1 December – Turbomilk, a graphic design company is founded in Samara.
  
  ## Notable births
  
  * 16 April – Dayana Kirillova, singer
  
  ## Notable deaths
  
  * 8 January – Aleksandr Mikhailovich Prokhorov, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1916)
  * 10 March - Natalia Derzhavina, actress (born 1942)
  * 19 September – Sergei Bodrov Jr., actor (born 1971)
  