Today: Lavrov clarifies British Council move; Kasparov steps down from presidential race; Poland could lift EU-Russia veto; news that Russia and Belarus are in talks to unite is met by protests; hopes of re-writing the CFE Treaty; Rostov bird flu investigation; could President Putin be assassinated next year? A new report thinks so.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has defended the foreign ministry’s move to shut down the British Council’s regional offices in Yekaterinburg and St Petersburg next year, admitting that it is being made in retaliation for Britain’s expulsion of Russian diplomats in July of this year. “The British government undertook some actions which inflicted systemic damage to our relations so we have to retaliate. This is nothing to do with anti-British sentiments. It’s the law of the genre, if you wish.” One newspaper called it “diplomatic vindictiveness”.