TODAY: Gazprom boosts its media assets; bloggers charged; Azarov says Ukraine decision made at Putin meeting; police end Italian journalist gay rights demonstration; Politkovskaya delays are due to perpetrator’s power, says journalist; ‘Angolagate’ arrest; Abramovich investing $1bn in Skolkovo; giant suitcase offends deputies.

State-run Gazprom’s media arm purchased the Profmedia bundle of media assets from Vladimir Potanin for an undisclosed sum. A Russian journalist commented that the deal, which gives the Kremlin control of seven television channels, makes it ‘look a lot like Mediaset [Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire]’, given that Gazprom already owns considerable media interests.  An anti-Kremlin blogger, charged with promoting extremism for retweeting a call to destroy the property of corrupt officials, has been assigned a $1.3 million debt, supposedly in order to freeze his bank account.  Another blogger was sentenced to one and a half years for writing insulting blog posts about a judge.  Mykola Azarov, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, says his country made its decision to abandon plans to forge a trade agreement with the E.U. at a meeting with President Vladimir Putin who, Azarov says, demanded a say.