TODAY: Putin says internet isolation plan is for information security, not censorship; Russians see Western sanctions as affront, China support grows since Ukraine crisis; Russia pulls out of FLEX after gay adoption; conscription begins this fall, Arctic military command structure planned; Kasparov warns of Putin’s long-term goals; IMF halves its 2015 Russia growth forecast; new NATO head.

President Vladimir Putin indicated that he supports a plan to isolate Russia’s internet from the rest of the world, but insisted that the Kremlin is ‘not even considering’ censorship of sites. ‘Media freedoms, the right of people to receive and disseminate information — these are basic principles of any democratic state and society. They must be strictly adhered to.’  The plan, he says, is geared towards information security and protection from foreign political and military threats; Russian media nonetheless have likened it to China’s ‘Great Firewall’.  Russia is possibly responding to concerns that the West might try to shut off its global internet access, in connection with claims made recently by Edward Snowden that the NSA caused an internet outage in Syria in 2012.  71% of Russians polled by the Levada Center see Western sanctions as an attempt to weaken and humiliate their country, with 68% supporting current policy in Ukraine; Chinese popular support for Russia has risen by 19% since the Ukraine crisis began.  Russia has pulled out of the Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX), a Russia-U.S. exchange program, after a participant was adopted by a same-sex couple in the U.S.  Ukraine has revoked its agreement to jointly construct with Russia a bridge over the Kerch Strait.