TODAY: Putin expands rights council; two popular websites shut down under new Internet rules; Razvozzhayev confession mentions Georgia; Ivanov says he knew about space embezzlement; Rosneft head released on bail.

President Vladimir Putin’s human rights council lost 12 pre-existing members and gained 39 new ones in its latest shuffle.  The council’s former head, Ella Pamfilova, said that the expanded panel would make it ‘unclear whose voice will be taken into account and whose will not,’ and citing ‘controversial individuals’.  New members include Liliya Shibanova, of the Golos electoral monitoring group, journalist Leonid Parfyonov, and former presidential candidate Irina Khakamada.  The Washington Post discusses the Kremlin’s new Internet filtering policy, anticipating that it will slowly and increasingly be used to silence independent speech.  Two popular websites ‘crucial to Russia’s Internet subculture’ have just been banned.  Putin insisted yesterday at the first meeting of his new rights council that ‘Everything that is done in Russia is designed to make our country more effective and stable.’  What happened to the modernisation plan, wonders Mary Dejevsky.  Boris Kagarlitsky wants to know why investigators searched his home last week.  Details of Leonid Razvozzhayev’s disputed confession have been revealed – apparently the activist said that his actions were financed by the Georgian political elite.