TODAY: China slams Russia-Japan cooperation; E.U. considers Magnitsky sanctions, Ireland abandons similar plans after adoptions ban threat; psychologists push for completion of U.S. adoptions; unsolved journalist murders put Russia on CPJ list; Surkov defends Skolkovo; self-taught diplomacy.

A spokesperson for China’s Communist Party has slammed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s recent visit to Russia as ‘a naive attempt to contain China’, supposedly spurred by Chinese concerns about Russo-Japenese energy tie-ups.  India’s liquefied natural gas importer, Petronet, is seeking a supply deal with Gazprom to diversify imports.  Oil output came close to another post-Soviet record last month.  The European Union is considering adopting a sanctions list for Russian officials, akin to America’s Magnitsky List, but Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that rumours about a crisis in relations with the E.U. are ‘extremely exaggerated’.  An open letter by Russia’s top child psychologists appeals to Vladimir Putin to allow the completion of around 100 adoptions of Russian children by U.S. parents which were already in process when the ban was introduced.  Ireland has dropped its plans to impose Magnitsky List-style sanctions on Russian officials, after Russia countered by threatening to ban Irish adoptions of Russian children.