The super-rich have long played a role in U.S. politics but have an unusually prominent spot in incoming President Donald Trump's new administration.

President Joe Biden in his Wednesday farewell speech to the nation warned that American democracy was sliding into an “oligarchy” of tech billionaires.

Three decades ago, the world held its breath as tanks blasted the Russian parliament building in central Moscow while the Kremlin moved to flush out rebellious lawmakers in a crisis that shaped the country’s post-Soviet history.

Ruslan Khasbulatov, who led a rebellion against Russia’s first post-Soviet president, has died.

A top aide to Russian President Boris Yeltsin who helped prepare and signed the 1991 pact that led to the formal breakup of the Soviet Union has died.

People strolling across Moscow’s snowy Red Square on the evening of Dec. 25, 1991 witnessed one of the 20th century’s most pivotal moments.

A Russian military buildup has raised fears in Ukraine and the West that Moscow could invade its neighbor.

When the leaders of the Soviet Union’s three Slavic republics met at a secluded hunting lodge near the Polish border on Dec. 8, 1991, they delivered a death blow to the USSR.

The world held its breath 30 years ago when a group of top Communist officials ousted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and flooded Moscow with tanks.

Morris MacMatzen/Getty ImagesMOSCOW - On August 9, 1999, Russian history changed forever. Then-President Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin, his former head of domestic intelligence, as acting prime minister. But within less than six months of making him prime minister, Yeltsin unexpectedly handed Putin the presidency on New Year's Eve, 1999. "We will pursue terrorists everywhere," Putin vowed, as Russian forces bombed the capital of the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Not long after becoming acting president, Putin flew to Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in an Su-27 jet.