Fight in the suburbs

In the cottage village "Veshki-Zarechye", which is in the vicinity of Mytishchi near Moscow, on March 30, a large special operation of law enforcement agencies took place to neutralize a local resident.

During the day, 61-year-old Vladimir Bardanov fought alone with the officers of the National Guard, barricading himself in his own mansion.

That morning, law enforcement officers came to him with a search, suspecting the owner of illegal arms trafficking.

Instead of letting the security forces in, Bardanov opened fire from a machine gun and threw grenades in their direction.

The shootout lasted 12 hours and ended only after a fire broke out on the upper floors of the mansion.

The man's body was found in the ashes.

During a search, a huge arsenal was found in the house: several dozen pieces of firearms, including three Kalashnikov assault rifles, a light machine gun, a Sudaev submachine gun, a Kedr submachine gun, as well as hundreds of packs of cartridges of various calibers, many grenades and explosives.

A significant part belonged to the era of the Second World War.

In addition, on the territory of a luxurious mansion with rich interiors, a private mini-zoo was found during a search, in which a tiger, a bear and a lynx lived.

The identity of Bardanov even after his death remains a mystery in many ways.

The exact motives that prompted him to such a desperate act are still not clear.

It is known that Bardanov received his first conviction at the age of 16, in 1976, after which he had problems with the law more than once.

According to official data, the deceased was engaged in the security business and trade in motorcycles.

Aviation accidents

In 2021, there were several plane crashes in Russia.

The largest of them was the crash on July 6 of the An-26 aircraft near the airport of the village of Palana in Kamchatka, as a result of which all 28 people on board were killed.

The airliner of the Kamchatskoye Aviation Enterprise operated a regular flight from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, but shortly before landing crashed into a mountain.

  • An-26 crashed in Kamchatka

  • © EMERCOM of Russia

Specialists of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), in the framework of the preliminary report, after decoding the flight recorder with the recordings of the pilots' conversations, came to the conclusion that the cause of the tragedy was the wrong actions during the landing of the aircraft commander Dmitry Nikiforov.

Soon another disaster struck in Kamchatka.

On August 12, a Mi-8T helicopter of the Vityaz-Aero airline with tourists on board fell into the Kuril Lake during the landing approach and sank at a depth of about 130 meters, 700 meters from the coast.

In total, there were 16 people on board, including three crew members and one child.

Only eight managed to get out of the sinking helicopter and swim to the surface, where they were rescued by the staff of the Kronotsky Nature Reserve.

Among those rescued were six tourists and two crew members.

Later, the divers managed to lift the bodies of the dead to the surface, and in September the helicopter itself.

The "black boxes" were handed over to the IAC specialists.

Immediately after the tragedy, piloting error was named as the priority version of the crash.

In addition, the year was remembered for the tragedy in the Moscow region, where, during a test flight on August 17, a prototype of the newest Russian military transport aircraft Il-112V caught fire and crashed.

On board were three crew members, including Hero of Russia, Honored Test Pilot of Russia Nikolai Kuimov.

When hitting the ground, they all died.

Before the tragedy, the plane managed to make only two flights.

The official results of the investigation have not yet been presented.

Sources of news agencies noted that the most likely cause of the crash was an engine malfunction.

Shooting in educational institutions

There were two massacres in 2021.

In Kazan, on May 11, 19-year-old Ilnaz Galyaviev burst into gymnasium No. 175, where he detonated an explosive device and started shooting.

The victims of the attack were nine people - seven pupils 8 "a" aged 14 to 15 years and two teachers.

More than 30 people were injured.

  • Flowers in memory of those killed in the shooting at Perm University

  • RIA News

  • © Alexey Smirnov

Galyaviev was detained.

Previously, he repeatedly complained of severe headaches, as a result of which he was diagnosed with encephalopathy, indicating a brain disease.

Despite the fact that Galyaviev associated himself with God, the young man was eventually recognized as sane and would soon be brought to trial.

Another massacre took place on September 20 in Perm.

A well-armed 18-year-old student of the local state university, Timur Bekmansurov, wearing a mask and helmet, burst into his home school and started shooting indiscriminately.

Its victims were 6 people, another 47 were injured.

The attacker managed to neutralize the traffic police officers Konstantin Kalinin and Vladimir Makarov, who were the first of the security officials to arrive at the scene.

Bekmansurov was seriously wounded in a shootout with them, and his leg was amputated in the hospital.

Explosion in Voronezh

On August 12, in the very center of Voronezh, an explosion occurred in a city bus, as a result of which two people were killed and another 26 were injured.

The first version about a possible malfunction of the gas cylinder equipment was quickly refuted, since the PAZ bus ran on diesel fuel and was not re-equipped.

The version about the competitive showdown of local transport companies was not confirmed either.

Explosive technicians from the FSB and investigators from Moscow were immediately involved in the investigation of the circumstances of the explosion, but so far the experts have not been able to identify not only the suspects in the explosion, but also to reliably determine the composition of the explosive.

So far, no one has taken responsibility for the incident either.

According to RT sources, experts are currently leaning towards the version of a terrorist attack, but in the interests of the investigation, they are in no hurry to voice their developments.

Murder of a child in Tyumen

Nastya Muravyova disappeared on June 30 in the Lesobaz area on the outskirts of Tyumen.

She warned the adults that she would go for a walk and was going to download the game via free Wi-Fi in a nearby house, after which she never returned home.

After a long search, the body of an 8-year-old girl was found only on August 19, two kilometers from her home, in a bag with traces of rape and strangulation.

At the same time, it turned out that soon after the disappearance of the girl, this place was already surveyed by volunteers, but no traces were found then.

  • Toys and candles near the house on Sudostroiteley Street in Tyumen, where eight-year-old Anastasia Muravyova lived

  • RIA News

  • © Natalia Gorshkova

The suspect in the murder was detained on 25 August.

It turned out to be a 40-year-old Vitaly Berezhnoy, previously not convicted furniture assembler, who lived in a neighboring house.

On June 30, a girl came to his entrance for free internet.

In a state of drug intoxication, he spoke to her and lured her into the apartment, where he tied, abused and strangled.

For several days the man kept the corpse in the refrigerator, after which he took it to the shore of the lake, where it was found.

Berezhnoy himself confessed to the murder.

The brutal crime against a child, who was unsuccessfully searched for by hundreds of people, caused a huge public outcry throughout the country.

In the wake of rumors that the girl could become a victim of a maniac, on whose account there are other victims, the head of the RF IC, Alexander Bastrykin, instructed him to report in detail to him about the circumstances of 9 cases of disappearance of children that have occurred in the city over the past 24 years.

Mass escape of prisoners from the IVS 

On the night of August 6, five people escaped from the temporary detention center (IVS) of the police department in the city of Istra near Moscow.

Four of them were from Moldova and were involved in a criminal case of theft.

The fifth was a native of Kazakhstan, Alexander Mavridi, accused of murdering the head of the Meat Empire company, Vladimir Marugov.

Shortly before his escape, at the request of Mavridi, the guards transferred him to a cell with the Moldovans.

At about 2:30 am, the inmates were able to break the food service window in the cell doors, then unscrew the locks, walked through the entire IVS facility, knocked down the padlock on the gate and were released.

The guards noticed their disappearance only in the morning.

The first two fugitives were detained only on August 11 in Podolsk.

The third participant in the escape surrendered himself the next day, all this time he did not leave Istra.

The fourth escaped person was caught on August 18 in the Novgorod region.

Mavridi was hiding from the detectives for the longest time; he was detained only on September 13 in Moscow.

He tried to actively resist the operatives.

As part of the investigation into the circumstances of the escape, the investigators carefully checked the employees of the IVS.

However, at the end of December it became known that there was no evidence of intentional assistance to the fugitives on their part.

However, charges of abuse of office were brought against three employees of the detention center.

The death of Evgeny Zinichev

The head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry, Yevgeny Zinichev, died tragically on September 8 at the Bolshoi Irkindinsky waterfall on the Putorana plateau, 120 kilometers from Norilsk.

He arrived in Taimyr to conduct large-scale exercises of the Ministry of Emergencies.

  • Evgeny Zinichev

  • globallookpress.com

The tragic incident took place at about seven o'clock in the morning, when Zinichev and director Alexander Melnik stood on the edge of a cliff.

In front of several subordinates of the head of the Ministry of Emergencies and his guards, Melnik stumbled and lost his balance, to which Zinichev immediately reacted.

He tried to keep the satellite from falling, but instead he stumbled on wet stones and fell with him from a great height.

The next day, Zinichev was awarded the title of Hero of Russia.

President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin attended the farewell ceremony on September 10 in Moscow.

Deputy hunting

State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Valery Rashkin at the end of October was in the epicenter of a scandal.

On the night of October 29, in the Lysogorosky district of the Saratov region, a car driven by the deputy was stopped on a forest road by a district police officer and a representative of the hunting committee.

On examination, fragments of an elk carcass and two knives with traces of blood were found in the back.

In December, Rashkin was charged in a criminal case of illegal hunting committed by a group of persons in a preliminary conspiracy.

At first, the parliamentarian claimed that he accidentally found the carcass of an animal in the forest, but on November 18 he published a video message in which he presented a new version of events.

The politician nevertheless confessed to killing an elk, stating that he confused him with a wild boar and added that he had become a victim of a provocation.

  • Valery Rashkin

  • © Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Saratov Region

In addition to the criminal case, which threatens him with imprisonment for up to five years, the magistrate's court on December 28 deprived Rashkin of his driver's license for a year and a half and fined him 30 thousand rubles.

He was found guilty of refusing a medical examination for alcohol intoxication.

The tragedy at the Listvyazhnaya mine

The largest man-made disaster of 2021 occurred in the Kemerovo region.

There, on November 25, a methane explosion occurred at the Listvyazhnaya coal mine at a depth of 250 meters.

At that moment, there were 285 miners underground.

Most of them managed to rise to the surface, but 46 people could not get out on their own and eventually died.

The number of injured miners has exceeded a hundred.

Five more employees of the Novokuznetsk paramilitary mine rescue detachment were killed during an urgent search and rescue operation.

Initially, the Ministry of Emergency Situations officially announced six dead rescuers, all of them were awarded the Order of Courage.

However, a few hours after the tragic message, one of the six missing, 51-year-old doctor Alexander Zakovryashin, was able to independently leave the mine alive.

During the investigation of the causes of the explosion, systemic violations were revealed both in the organization of the work of miners and on the part of regulatory bodies, including corruption.

The management of the mine was sharply criticized by President Vladimir Putin.

According to him, it systematically took measures to conceal the facts of excessive gas pollution in the methane mine.

  • Listvyazhnaya mine

  • RIA News

  • © Alexander Kryazhev

Serious questions arose from him and to the owners of the mine: “Does the board of directors follow what is happening in the security sphere or does it only count money?” The president asked the head of the SDS holding Mikhail Fedyaev during a special meeting devoted to the coal industry.

It took place on December 2, and on December 15 he was detained, as was the general director of the SDS-Ugol company, which owns the mine, Gennady Alekseev.

During a meeting with the president, he admitted his responsibility for the tragedy and declared that he was "ready to bear all the punishments."

In addition to them, immediately after the tragedy, the management of the mine and the site, as well as employees of Rostekhnadzor, who worked at Listvyazhnaya a week before the tragedy, were detained.

They drew up an act on the inspection of the ventilation drift, where people died, without actually examining it.