Moscow

Moscow is the capital city and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural and scientific center in Russia and in Europe.

HYDRA Desertion
In 1943, Johann Schmidt and his HYDRA division went rogue, separating themselves from the Nazi regime and intended to nuke the capitals of all countries that would resist his conquest, including Moscow.

Birth of Whiplash
Anton Vanko settled in Moscow after being deported from the United States in 1967 accused of spying and sent to Siberia imprisoned. His son, Ivan Vanko, settled with him after he served 15 years in a prison for selling plutonium to Pakistan.

Anton died on October 25, 2010 in extreme poverty, blaming his situation on Howard Stark and his family. Ivan then created his Whiplash Armor using his father's blueprints for an Arc Reactor, as a weapon to be used to kill Howard's son, Tony Stark.

Upon finishing the armor, Ivan met an agent of the Ten Rings to obtain a forged ID and travel documents for confronting Tony Stark in Monaco.

Mantle of the Black Widow
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanoff was ordered to go undercover in Moscow and approach Russian arms dealer Mikhail Fjodorov to interrogate him about missing bootleg Starktech from Hammer Industries. During her mission, an assassin disguised as a dancer, and going by the name of Sofia, killed Fjodorov and blamed Romanoff as the culprit.

Natasha was forced to flee to the hotel she was staying, while the began cordoning the area of the assassination and emitting an arrest warrant for Tatiana Sokolova, Black Widow's alias during her mission.

While Agent Phil Coulson, who was acting as control for Romanoff's mission, began setting an extraction in, Romanoff was attacked at her hotel by four mercenaries from Eaglestar hired by Sofia, who were carrying a SIM card so that the Black Widow could contact her after defeating the mercenaries.

In the subsequent call, Sofia revealed that she took that alias because Sofia was the city where she first saw the Black Widow. She also revealed that, while wanting to become the new Black Widow, the reason for killing Fjodorov was simply that her employer wanted him dead.

Sofia agreed to reveal the location of the technology to compete with Romanoff for the mantle of the "Black Widow", but only under the condition that she works alone and without S.H.I.E.L.D.'s support.

Romanoff subsequently took herself off-line, and, as roads, trains and airports were under surveillance for Fjodorov's murderer, she left Moscow riding a Railbike to use the high-speed rail connecting the capital to Sochi.

Project Insight
Alexander Pierce used different examples to justify his actions regarding the approval of Project Insight for HYDRA in order to stop disorder, chaos and war all over the world. One of his examples was that it was a matter of time that a dirty bomb exploded in a city like Moscow.

For that, Pierce considered diplomacy to be useless, and he intended to use Project Insight to bring order to the lives of seven billion people by sacrificing the lives of twenty million.