TODAY: Ukraine makes partial gas payment, negotiations resume today; Public Chamber elections fail; two detained at gay rights protest; Rogozin’s GPS deadline arrives; Russian Railways sues Nemtsov; cigarette ban unpopular.

Ukraine says it will not pay the gas money it owes to Russia until a ‘fair contract’ has been signed; Kiev is insisting on a price of $268.50 per 1,000 cubic meters to Russia’s $485; but a partial payment of $786 million has been made, and new negotiations will take place in Russia today.  A successfully negotiated deal would be the beginning of improved relations between Russia’s relations with the EU, says the Times.  President Vladimir Putin may not be ‘directing’ events in eastern Ukraine, ‘but he is certainly their principal beneficiary’.  A major US exchange-traded fund saw its shares gain the most in two years on the back of lessening tensions with Ukraine, says Bloomberg.  But according to Businessweek, Russian stocks, on the whole, are at their most volatile in five years thanks to the Ukraine crisis.  The Moscow Times remembers Andrey Mironov, the journalist and human rights activist who was killed in clashes in Slavyansk, Ukraine last week.  Vladimir Putin’s popularity ratings have rocketed since the invasion of Crimea because ‘government propaganda about the Ukraine crisis goes completely unchallenged on state-owned and state-controlled national television network’.