TODAY: Kaliningrad passes homosexual propaganda bill, Duma votes to make it effective nationwide, Defence Ministry denies reports about determining soldiers’ sexuality; forest defender stabbed; Council of Europe on North Caucasus torture; Karpov suing Browder; pressure on Razvozzhayev; Putin approval rate low; Davos image buffing.

Kaliningrad has passed a bill to ban and impose fines on ‘homosexual propaganda’, as members of the State Duma prepare to vote today on a move to bring the ban into effect nationwide.  The Defence Ministry, in counter to reports released this week, says it will not seek to determine the sexual orientation of conscripts.  The A Just Russia party is threatening four of its members with expulsion if they do not abandon their roles in the Opposition Coordination Council.  A Duma deputy’s assistant and local lawmaker who fought against the development of Moscow forestland is in a critical condition after being stabbed in the chest by an unidentified assailant, with fellow activists immediately apportioning blame to the local administration.  The Council of Europe has accused Russian authorities of inflicting tortures on prisoners in the North Caucasus, after Russia itself authorised the publication of the findings.  Former Moscow police officer Pavel Karpov is suing U.K. businessman William Browder for the latter’s campaigns against corruption within the Russian system, which have seen him publicly accuse 60 officials, including Karpov, of involvement in the fraud case that lawyer Sergei Magnitsky had been investigating before his arrest and subsequent death.  A plan to convert a children’s cancer hospital into a medical center for top judges has been abandoned, apparently in response to public pressure.