TODAY: Protesters greet Putin on his Armenia customs union trip; Putin slams Kiev ‘pogrom’; Navalny testifies at Bolotnaya Square trial; RDIF seeking regional opportunities; Central Bank intervenes in Samara; Arctic to become navy priority; Uralchem buys Uralkali stake.

President Vladimir Putin was welcomed to Armenia yesterday by hundreds of protesters, who demonstrated against their country’s plan to join Russia’s customs union with banners such as ‘Putin Go Home’ and ‘No to the U.S.S.R’.  Putin’s attempts to woo Armenia included boasts of ‘tangible dividends’ for other members of the union, and the revelation that Moscow will drop Armenia’s 30% export duties on natural gas, oil, and diamonds.  Putin also denounced the weekend’s Kiev protests, saying opposition activists were staging not a revolution but a pogrom, and accused them of ‘attempt[ing] to shake the current and, I want to emphasise, legitimate authorities’.  He also blamed ‘outside actors’.  Bloomberg wonders whether Putin is worried that ‘[t]he raw power of the Ukrainian protests could re-energize the Russian opposition movement, which he successfully quashed last year.’  Masha Gessen says the Kiev protests have inspired ‘envy’ in Russians.  Ukraine has agreed with the European Union that it will resume talks towards association and free trade.  This Guardian map shows Russia’s current actual and potential circle of influence.