TODAY: Putin takes verbal swipe at Alexander Lebedev; the ascent of Valentina Matviyenko; Mikhail Gorbachev asserts need for free elections; how Yabloko may stand to profit from the fracture of Right Cause.  Russia on losing team in Arab Spring?  Family of dead army conscript claim victim was tortured; FSB investigates publishers; Vesti FM accused of racism; Russia’s Oscar choice continues to cause controversy.

‘They do not have a front … So they hit each other in the ear. That is hooliganism … Imagine how they would fight for money!‘: Vladimir Putin’s verdict on the Alexander Lebedev vs Sergei Polonsky television brawl delivered at a meeting with the All Russian People’s Front.  Russia’s NATO envoy, perennial provocateur Dmitry Rogozin, who also leads a Russian nationalist campaign group, has thrown his support firmly behind the Prime Minister and urged colleagues to join the People’s Front.  Since becoming the speaker of the upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko has become ‘the most powerful Russian woman since Catherine the Great’ says the Telegraph.  ‘In practice, her ranking behind President Medvedev and Mr Putin, the Prime Minister, is little more than a paper position as head of a rubber-stamp institution‘ says Tony Halpin.  Matviyenko, who was previously the governor of St Petersburg, apparently supports, in principle, the idea of electing senators to the Upper House.