Russia

Russia, officially known as the Russian Federation, is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects.

Viking Raids
During the late 8th to late 11th centuries, the raided and traded from their Scandinavian homelands across wide areas of northern and central Europe. One of these raid routes took them though the Volga River in Russia. In the 21st century, this particular route was considered by Skye as one of the possible locations for the Berserker Staff, as Elliot Randolph suggested searching Viking routes for its possible location.

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 the Russian capital, Moscow.

United States Embassy
Jack Thompson contacted a man who met in primary school that had been destined to the United States embassy in Moscow, in order to search for Leet Brannis, one of their main suspects in their search for Howard Stark and his technology.

Thompson's contact discovered that Brannis was a member of the Soviet 478th Rifle Division during World War II, and that the entire battalion was wiped out during the battle of Finow in Germany. The contact informed Thompson that Brannis was declared deceased in 1944 with the rest of his batallion.

Thompson contacted him again to determine if the man whose hotel room key was found near the Brannis' corpse was also Russian, and the contact managed to identify him as Sasha Demidov, another member of the Soviet 478th Rifle Division that was declared deceased but turned out to have survived.

Imprisonment of Anton Vanko
Siberia was the place chosen by Soviet authorities to imprison Russian physicist Anton Vanko after he was deported back to the U.S.S.R. in 1967.

Soviet government sent him to a prison in Siberia, serving for 20 years, due to being unable to develop the Arc Reactor technology by himself, given that he developed it in the United States with Howard Stark, the man who ordered his deportation.

Vanko left Siberia and returned to Moscow following Premier Gorbachev’s call for democratization in January 1987, living in poverty with his son, Ivan Vanko.

Birth of Emil Blonsky
Russia was the birthplace of Emil Blonsky, although he was risen in England and become a member of the.

General Joe Greller explained Blonksy's origins to general Thaddeus Ross when he managed to enlist Blonsky to be part of Ross' Unit dedicated to locate and capture Bruce Banner.

Birth of Sofia
The city of Saint Petersburg in Russia was the birthplace of the woman who would become the mercenary known as Sofia.

Sofia spent her childhood as an orphan and a runaway on the streets of Saint Petersburg, until she was snatched to Bulgaria by the members of a human trafficking ring.

Birth of Natasha Romanoff
Stalingrad is the birthplace of Natasha Romanoff, who went to become one of the world's most talented spies, first for the Russian KGB and, eventually, for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Samuel Sterns, mutated by Bruce Banner's blood, requested Romanoff's assistance in escaping the authorities and securing his work. In order to convince her, he correctly guessed her birthplace as Stalingrad, recognizing faint traces of her accent, and offered her the home she hadn't had in many years.

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.

Thor's Skills
Chechnya has a reputation amongst the international community of being one of the best places in the world to train a mercenary. As such, Phil Coulson named Chechnya as one of the possible places where Thor received the training needed to subdue the multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. agents he defeated while trying to gain access to the heavily custodied Mjølnir in New Mexico.

Undercover
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.

Mantle of the Black Widow
After being blamed by the death of Russian arms dealer Mikhail Fjodorov during a mission to interrogate him about missing bootleg Starktech from Hammer Industries, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanoff traveled to Sochi after being attacked and contacted by the real assassin, a woman that only called herself Sofia.

Sofia revealed that she took that alias because that was the city where she first saw the Black Widow. She also revealed that, while she wanted 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 travelled to Sochi using the high-speed rail being constructed to connect Sochi to Moscow for the.

When she arrived in Sochi, Romanoff established an alibi cover, posing as a TV producer before being discovered by henchmen sent by General Starodoub. Fjodorov's partner.

Sofia met Romanoff face to face after killing S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Perez and Gerber, who were following her under agent Phil Coulson's orders. After a brief introduction, Sofia plunged Natasha into sinking in the freezing waters under an ice hockey rink, feeling betrayed for the interference of the agents. She revealed the location of the technology to Natasha while she was about to die from hypothermia.

Coulson was able to save Romanoff, who located her by having both Perez and Gerber follow Starodoub's goons, and inadvertedly sending them to their deaths as Sofia assumed they were following her per Romanoff's request.

Subsequently, Romanoff went undercover as international model Marya Konn in a party hosted by Yuri Klementiev, another of Fjodorov's partners. She came across Klementiev, who tried to seduce her thinking she was one of the models he is used to have on his boat, but she quickly dismissed him.

After that, Natasha approached fellow agent Gennady Markov, who had been posing as one of Klementiev's bodyguards for weeks, and obtained information to try to locate the technology.

General Starodoub was seen in the party talking to Mohammed Yavari, a member of the Iranian intelligence interested in buying the Starktech.

Romanoff located the technology and was able to retrieve it from a guarded cabin inside the yacht where the party was being hosted. However, she was forcerd to handle the technology to Sofia when she took Gennady Markov as a hostage, killing him to allow her to escape. Realizing how dangerous Sofia's games were for other people instead that only for herself, Romanoff vowed to kill Sofia by herself.

Sojourn Enterprises
Richard Frampton founded Sojourn Enterprises, a transport multinational with a space tourism division, that in reality was a cover for some of the Ten Rings activities, and located its headquarters in Vladivostok.

One of Frampton's terrorist acts for the Ten Rings was to acquire Hammer Industries's version of Stark Industries Jericho missile. He tasked the mercenary only known as Sofia to retrieve it, killing Russian arms dealer Mikhail Fjodorov and at least three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents in the process, travelling to to Vladivostok to hand the technology to Frampton.

When S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson discovered that Sofia's employer was the billionaire Richard Frampton, Agent Natasha Romanoff infiltrated Sojourn Enterprises headquarters in Vladivostok. There she discovered that he has made a Jericho missile that would explode near the border between Russia and North Korea, greatly destabilising the world peace.

Ten Rings
Natasha Romanoff boarded a train containing the last shipment to the launch site of one of the Jericho missiles constructed under orders of Richard Frampton, a industrialist and member of the Ten Rings terrorist group, that tried to destabilise the region launching the missile near the border between Russia and North Korea.

Frampton oversaw the assembling of the missile in one of the facilities of Sojourn Enterprises destined to space tourism. Upon the final cross-check was finished and the missile was ready to be launched, Frampton congratulated all the personnel involved, specially Sofia, the mercenery who retrieved one of the most elusive pieces needed to assemble the missile.

The train carrying the post-launch recovery equipment approached to the facility, but as it was hijacked by Romanoff, it crashed against the facility. Romanoff emerged from the train and killed many of the security guards to approach the manual control of the targeting mechanism for the missile, just twenty seconds before its launch to avoid them being redirected to their intended target.

Sofia, under Frampton's orders, tried to kill Romanoff, and the two women began an intense fight. When it seemed that Romanoff gained the upper hand, Sofia pulled out a pair of guns and aimed at Romanoff, explaining how she admired the Black Widow so much upon witnessing one of her missions before joining S.H.I.E.L.D., and become obsessed with taking over the mantle of the Black Widow. Romanoff simply answered that she was not a good person when they first met, and waited until Sofia finished, realizing that she was next to the rocket engines of the missiles.

When the countdown reached zero, the missile was launched and killed Sofia, burning her alive under the engine. As Romanoff changed the target of the missile to hit the same launching site, most of it was destroyed by the ensuing explosions that also killed Frampton.

Many S.H.I.E.L.D. Strike teams led by Phil Coulson arrived in the aftermath of the explosion, in order to arrest the surviving members of the Ten Rings and interrogate them about their other activities in Russia.

Nick Fury approached Romanoff and asked her if she was alright, and Romanoff answered how similar Sofia was to how Romanoff was before redeeming herself, feeling that many would have thought that Romanoff was not worth saving as Sofia was.

Interrogation of Georgi Luchkov
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Natasha Romanoff investigated General Georgi Luchkov for his crimes as an illegal weapons dealer. In order to obtain information about his contacts, Romanoff let Luchkov discover her identity and submit her to an interrogation. Romanoff let her captors beat her to make them think they had the situation under control, but she was able to turn the interrogation and Luchkov revealed the true identity of his contacts. Phil Coulson made a call to the phone of one of Luchkov's men, threatening Luchkov to obliterate the building with a F-22 Raptor, and demanding to speak to Romanoff. Coulson tried to make Romanoff leave her mission to carry out an urgent task, and couldn't convince her until revealing that Clint Barton was in trouble.

Romanoff freed herself while fighting Luchkov and his men, easily defeating them despite being tied to a chair. Romanoff picked up the phone and asked about Barton's status. Coulson couldn't reveal much, and promised to brief her upon returning from a mission, recruiting The Big Guy to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. Thinking Coulson was referring to Tony Stark, Romanoff told Coulson about how few Stark trusted her, but Coulson clarified that he was going to talk to Stark, and Romanoff's target was not Stark, but "The Big Guy", an alias to refer Bruce Banner.

Undercover Mission
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Shaw infiltrated a Russian underground prison in Siberia in order to collect information about a separatist group in South Ossetia and a weapon they managed to obtain, the Overkill Device.

Phil Coulson got himself captured and brought to the same prison, in order to provoke his captors and being interrogated, as the interrogator was none other than agent Shaw. Coulson revealed to Shaw his cover had been blown and needed to escape.

Melinda May and Grant Ward defeated the guards and escaped from the facility, using a motorized sled to arrive at the Bus.

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.