2002 in Russia

Decades:	1980s; 1990s; 2000s; 2010s; 2020s;
See also:	History of Russia; Timeline of Russian history; List of years in Russia;

Events from the year 2002 in Russia.

Incumbents

21 January – Commercial television station TV6 closed down by the Russian government.^[1]
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.^[2]
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.^[3]
25 September – Vitim event: a large meteorite crashes in the Vitim River basin in Siberia.^[4]
23 October – Moscow theater hostage crisis: 40 Chechen separatists seize a theatre in Moscow taking 850 hostages.^[1]
26 October – Moscow theater hostage crisis: Russian special forces storm the theatre killing the Chechens and over 100 hostages.^[1]
1 December – Turbomilk, a graphic design company is founded in Samara.^[5]

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)