TODAY: Politkovskaya killers convicted; no announcement on China gas deal; Medvedev warns against new Cold War, defends economy; global payment companies to stay in Russia; Prince compares Putin to Hitler; Moscow denies ninth consecutive Gay Pride parade.

Five men have been convicted of the 2006 murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya – four of them for organising, and one for carrying out the killing, but the person or persons who ordered the killing remain unidentified, with many suspecting that those responsible have close ties to the Kremlin. A lawyer for Politkovskaya’s family commented: ‘The murder will only be solved when the name of the person who ordered it is known.’  In what the Times calls a ‘surprise failure’, President Vladimir Putin’s visit to China has not yet yielded closure on a long-awaited gas supply deal as prices have not yet been finalised. The deal will amount to ‘just a fraction of Gazprom’s current sales to Europe,’ notes RFE/RL.  Putin’s trip is ‘a diplomatic boost’ for Russia, giving it solidarity on the Ukraine crisis and bringing the country closer to its goal of expanding cooperation with its neighbour – even as analysts struggle to figure out which side has the upper hand.  Rosneft says that Russia has made an offer of scrapping extraction taxes for China-bound gas supplies, and China is apparently seeking to abolish import taxes on Russian gas as well.  Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned Europe and the U.S. against provoking a new Cold War.  State television head Dmitry Kiselyov said the use of falsely-attributed footage to illustrate a story about alleged anti-Russian violence in Ukraine was an accident.