2000 (MM) was a century leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, the 2000th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 1000th and last year of the 2nd millennium, the 100th and last year of the 20th century, and the 1st year of the 2000s decade. 

The Year 2000 problem, also known as the Y2K problem, the Millennium bug, Y2K bug, the Y2K glitch, or Y2K, refers to events related to the formatting and storage of calendar data for dates beginning in the year 2000. Problems were anticipated, and arose, because many programs represented four-digit years with only the final two digits – making the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. The assumption of a twentieth-century date in such programs could cause various errors, such as the incorrect display of dates and the inaccurate ordering of automated dated records or real-time events. 

The world celebrates the turn of the millennium

The year 2000 was the first year of the 2000s decade. Popular culture holds the year 2000 as the first year of the 21st century and third millennium, due to a tendency to group the years according to decimal values, as if year zero were counted. According to the Gregorian calendar, however, this distinction falls to the year 2001, because the first century was retroactively said to start with year AD 1. Since the calendar has no year "zero", its first millennium spans from years 1 to 1000, inclusively, its second millennium from years 1001 to 2000 and its third from 2001 to 3000.

The dot-com bubble bursts

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1998–2000, during which stock markets in industrialised nations saw their equity value rise sharply from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related technology fields.

A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, market confidence that the companies would turn future profits, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital created an environment in which many investors were willing to overlook traditional metrics in favour of confidence in technological advancements.

The bubble reached its peak on 10th March 2000, with the NASDAQ at 5132. This was followed by a crash with huge numbers of startups going bust. Between 2000 and 2002, more than $5 trillion was wiped off the value of technology companies.

Vladimir Putin is elected president of Russia

Vladimir Putin rose to the presidency after the unexpected resignation of Boris Yeltsin. He continued through with many of his same policies. Putin began his presidency with an aggressive legal reform of the Russian government. Among his first actions was to group the 89 federal subjects (states of the Russian Federation) into seven federal districts, each directly reporting to his office in order to facilitate his administration.

Overall, Putin worked to reorganise the government in a stricter and more vertically structured manner. From this, he began to focus on domestic change, beginning with a refinement of criminal, tax, and land law. He addressed some of the more serious demographic trends in Russia – including its high death rate, cyclical poverty and housing issues. During his two terms, Russia made huge gains in purchasing power, saw GDP increase six-fold and experienced rapid increases in industry and investment, by 76% and 125% respectively. Poverty fell by 16% and a flat tax rate was introduced.

From 2000 to 2008, oil and natural gas more than doubled their share of GDP. Despite these economic gains, inflation remained a problem, while the gap between rich and poor continued to widen.

In 2006, Russia hosted the G8 Summit for the first time since joining the forum in 1997. Throughout his presidency, Putin maintained a cool relationship with the West, though often criticised foreign countries and their affairs, notably the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Putin himself was criticised for suppression of the media and his borderline fascist policies. After his reelection, accusations were made that he suppressed other political factions and reduced pluralism in Russian society. Many in the West saw him as anti-democratic.