TODAY: Youtube policeman faces slander investigation; Omsk students threatened with expulsion; Committee to Protect Journalists urge global attention to threats against media in Russia. Merkel thanks Gorbachev; Medvedev approves new military bill; advocates abolition of death penalty. Delay for Gazprom eyesore?; Nobel Prize winning physicist dies; Kalashnikov goes on; gangsters' idea of cemetery chic. Corruption-highlighting policeman Alexei Dymovsky is now facing three investigations after posting a video address to Putin lamenting the state of the police, including an Investigative Committee examination of whether the policeman's accusations hold any truth; another investigation is against Dymovsky himself, for slander.  Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev has already ordered an investigation into the Novorossiisk police force and suspended Dymovsky ...

TODAY: Russia relenting on Iran sanctions; calls missile defense decision constructive; arms reductions talks are apparently progressing apace; Medvedev urges for Middle East arms cuts too.  Island cooperation for Japan and Russia; Georgia undecided on Guantanamo guests; Poland - officially - condemns Soviet invasion. Moscow mayor doesn't take criticism lightly. President Medvedev has apparently agreed following talks with Barack Obama to consider sanctions if Iran does not agree to transparency about its nuclear program. 'Sanctions rarely lead to productive results but in some cases are inevitable', the Russian president has said.  'The sanctions Medvedev has in mind might fall far short of those that the White House are thinking of', suggests a piece in the Guardian.  The ...

This is a very sad day for Russian democracy as one of the leading opposition parties, the Union of Right Forces, has voted to disband and form another party under the Kremlin's control. The party's decision was pushed by Anatoly Chubais and Leonid Gozman, who said that "Some people say you have no moral right to make deals with these people in the Kremlin after what they have done. But if you want to make change in your country, you can't ignore the reality, and the reality is the Kremlin of Putin. I don't like the reality, but that doesn't change it." As may be expected, the disbanding of the party is fiercely opposed by Boris Nemtsov and Nikita Belykh. Perhaps the most preposterously naive quote from this story comes from Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who thinks that this new state controlled party could eventually take on a ...

This is a very sad day for Russian democracy as one of the leading opposition parties, the Union of Right Forces, has voted to disband and form another party under the Kremlin's control. The party's decision was pushed by Anatoly Chubais and Leonid Gozman, who said that "Some people say you have no moral right to make deals with these people in the Kremlin after what they have done. But if you want to make change in your country, you can't ignore the reality, and the reality is the Kremlin of Putin. I don't like the reality, but that doesn't change it." As may be expected, the disbanding of the party is fiercely opposed by Boris Nemtsov and Nikita Belykh. Perhaps the most preposterously naive quote from this story comes from Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who thinks that this new state controlled party could eventually take on a ...