TODAY: Khodorkovsky warns UK coalition against improving relations with Russia; the status of women; extradition quandary for Poland on Chechen separatist; Russia will sell cruise missiles to Syria.  Luzhkov to take time off; speculation about the fate of Moscow mayor continues.  Nashi withdraws Le Monde lawsuit; Medvedev tries his hand at Putin-style photo-op

‘I, as a Russian political prisoner, would very much like Britain to understand the fate of 150 million people, capable and talented, that are searching for their way out of the darkness of totalitarianism into the light of freedom’: Mikhail Khodorkovsky has penned a piece in the Observer urging the British government to seriously consider its relationship with the Kremlin in advance of the first official trip by Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to Russia next month.  The Guardian points out that the coalition contains Tory elements sympathetic to Russia and keen to ease cold relations in pursuit of energy deals.  The Observer’s editorial concludes: ‘Khodorkovsky is no Solzhenitsyn. But the thrust of his argument is sound’.   David J. Kramer in the Washington Post argues that the US is failing to act on human rights abuses in Russia and lays out a six-point plan detailing how Washington can end what he views as its ‘complicity’ in Russian authoritarianism.  RFE/RL reports that 14,000 women die each year from domestic violence in Russia, more than ten times that reported in the US, in a sobering report on the lot of Russian women in the twenty-first century.