TODAY: Gorbachev launches stinging verbal attack on Putin’s ‘overconfidence’; Khodorkovsky disheartened by prospect of PM’s possible return to power; Kudrin’s reform talk analyzed. Patriarch’s dacha plans upset environmentalists; Medvedev puts foot down on corruption in law enforcement; new police website; FSB chief ousted; terrorism concerns for Sochi; Kurils; Russia’s battle with heroin

According to the New York Times, once President Mikhail Gorbachev has lambasted Vladimir Putin’s comments about deciding which half of the diarchy will run for President, as a show of ‘incredible conceit’ and disdain for the Russia electorate.  The last Soviet leader also called United Russia a ‘rotting monopoly’ and ‘a bad copy of the Soviet Communist Party’.  ‘If Putin runs in the elections, this would mean that the peaceful transition of power has failed‘: Mikhail Khodorkovsky is none too pleased either about the prospect of a third term for Putin, in written comments published by Kommersant-Vlast.  Meanwhile the Independent‘s Mary Dejevsky considers the discrepancy between the Prime Minister’s image at home and that held of him abroad, arguing ‘there is a defence of Putin to be made’.  ‘Was he speaking with Putin’s blessing?’ wonders Brian Whitmore over Finance Minister and close ally Alexei Kudrin’s unusual comments in praise of free and just elections at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum.  Konstantin Sonin in a Moscow Times op-ed considers whether the statements, were, as some would have it, a challenge to the Prime Minister.  Reports of Vladimir Putin’s palatial Black Sea mansion have caused uproar but, argues Alexei Pankin, ‘[T]he problem is that every time there is a public fight against “dacha corruption,” it ends with a new round of hardships for ordinary citizens’.  Apparently Patriarch Kirill’s dacha, the construction of which allegedly threatens an endangered forest on the Black Sea coast, has enraged activists.