TODAY: Central Bank power grows with Putin’s; Yakunin says Russia should declare financial amnesty; Lavrov fights veto abuse allegations, calls for a new reset with the U.S., blames NATO for an unending Cold War; Fogh-Rasmussen says Russia a disappointment; Rosneft and ExxonMobil strike oil in Arctic; foreign media law to hit global players; Tiger Day.

Bank Rossiya, or the Central Bank, has seen its assets grow ‘in parallel with [Putin’s] career’ thanks to deals with state companies and government guidance, reports the New York Times, with a graph charting the bank’s assets, and a more detailed piece about its privileges, which describes it as ‘woven deeply into the Putin system’.  There is also a summary of Putin’s ‘inner circle’, including incomes and net worth.  In an interview with ITAR-TASS, Vladimir Yakunin, whose salary in 2013 was $15 million, says Russia should declare financial amnesty and take steps to restore capital markets.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russia Today (click for the Russian language version) that accusations about Russia abusing its veto right in the UN Security Council are false; that Moscow has no desire to continue a sanctions war with the West; and called for ‘reset 2.0’ with the United States to return ties to normal, with the caveat that ‘it was not us who destroyed them’.  Talking to Bloomberg, he accused the U.S. of having a habit of ‘speaking for everyone’, and said he doesn’t think that the Cold War ever ended, citing NATO’s post-Soviet expansion as a violation of international agreements.  In an article for the Independent, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh-Rasmussen calls Russia his ‘deepest disappointment of the past five years’, alleging that from the start of his role, the country rejected his attempts at establishing a strategic partnership.