TODAY: Clinton turns attention to civil society and gives speech tackling human rights abuses; Walt Whitman statue unveiled; Putin advises against intimidating Iran; opposition politicians stage Duma walk out.  Memorial to appeal.  Putin turns pop svengali?'In an innovative society, people must be free to take unpopular positions, disagree with conventional wisdom, know they are safe to challenge abuses of authority': Hillary Clinton affirmed her support for dissidence and human rights protection in a speech at Moscow State University.  'That's why attacks on journalists and human rights activists are such a great concern, because it is a threat to progress', she is quoted as saying in the New York Times.  Click here for a video of Clinton ...

The Financial Times profiles the new Russian owner of 2% of Facebook.

Mr Milner's story, like his growing portfolio, combines American ideas with Russian opportunities. The son of an economist and a doctor, he studied particle physics at Moscow State University and worked as a researcher at the Soviet Union's prestigious Academy of Sciences.

As the transformation of the country accelerated in 1990, "instead of sticking around and doing useful stuff like privatising oil companies, I went to the US to study," Mr Milner jokes. He became the first Russian graduate of the Wharton School of Business, after which he spent three years at the World Bank working on Russia's emerging financial sector. He then joined Menatep, the bank founded and formerly owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon arrested in 2003. Mr Milner set up

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Tuesday's big news was that the Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies purchased a 2% stake of preferred shares in the immensely popular social media platform Facebook.  But who is this group, and who's behind it?  Other the company's official website, you can expect the Financial Times to devote several pages to the story in tomorrow's edition.  According to the company site, DST was founded in 2005 by Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger, and was given a nice doorway into Goldman Sachs when they were joined by Alexander Tamas in 2008 (the FT piece acknowledges that GS helped provide the introduction between Milner and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerman which eventually led to the deal).  DST's most well known internet property is Mail.Ru ...

KGB methods are back in action

Grigory Pasko, journalist

Echo Moskvy and Kasparov.Ru are both reporting a story about an attempt by an FSB officer to "recruit" a student and opposition activist at Moscow State University, threatening to expell him from the school under extremism charges if he did not cooperate and become a Kremlin turncoat within the student organizations he was a part of.  The student in question, Alexander Saveliev, a third year philology major, says that the officer introduced himself, flashed an ID under the name of Andrey Fedorov, and said that he was on an investigation on behalf of FSB Centre "E" to gather info on the activities of the Oborona and Solidarity student movements.

Russia's spy services sure have a maniacal

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This New York Times piece has been making the rounds this weekend, pointing out, for those who didn't already know, that Mikheil Saakashvili and Vladimir Putin don't get along all that well.  But the highly emotional angle between these two heads of state is also indicative of something more ... How it may still be difficult for many Russians to come to terms with the inconvenient fact of Georgian sovereignty when there are still so many childhood memories of family vacations spent there, adoration for its food and traditions, and an unescapable sense of ownership.

With the two men now so at odds that they are not speaking, their mutual dislike has in some ways come to define the current state of ties between Russia and Georgia. Mr. Putin, the former president who is now prime minister, has unabashedly told the Russian people

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