TODAY: Opposition apartments searched by investigators; Putin invokes Soviet nostalgia; analysts question the viability of anti-graft drive. Lady Gaga falls foul of anti-gay propaganda law; Politkovskaya’s son criticizes probe into her death. UR draws on adoption issues in retaliation to Magnitsky list; Gazprom reinitiates talks with China.

Investigators have raided the apartments of opposition activists Sergei Udaltsov, Leonid Razvozzhayev and Konstantin Lebedev as part of the criminal case into an alleged plot by the men to instigate riots across Russia.  Investigators claim to have found evidence that opposition activists received some funding from Georgian politician Givi Targamadze.  Vladimir Putin is expected to highlight the ills of corruption in today’s state of the nation address, but he will have to contend with the fact that ‘these public events are less effective than they used to be.’   Brian Whitmore considers how Putin can really extirpate graft when it is a systemic part of the state.  The President has been criticized by rights groups for comparing Lenin’s remains to those of saints, in another example, Bloomberg says, of his recent deployment of Soviet nostalgia.