TODAY: UK security officers say Litvinenko murder was backed by Russian state; blogger given suspended sentence; Medvedev’s meeting with UK’s Gordon Brown leaves relations “in the deep freeze”, and “no particular progress” with the US; Russia and EU to scrap visas. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has held his first face-to-face meeting and “extremely frank” discussion with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the G8 summit in Tokyo, but it is being reported that Brown received “little sign that Moscow was prepared to give ground” on issues of TNK-BP visas, the closing of the British Council, or the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, and that relations remain “in the deep freeze”. Supposedly, Brown received “scraps of comfort” regarding investment and in the implication that Russia “would continue to be helpful on trying to nudge Iran down from its nuclear ambitions,” but other reports allege that Vladimir Putin spoke with Iranian President Ahmadinejad yesterday, pledging to speed up the construction of Iran’s first nuclear-energy plant. Perhaps the UK “should be asking whether there is not something about Britain in particular that rubs the Kremlin up the wrong way”. The Russian press sees the meeting as “completely positive”. On his meeting with President George Bush, Medvedev commented, “There is no particular progress”, and the US has called on Russia to reverse its “recent provocative steps” in Abkhazia.