TODAY: Potash price war feared after Uralkali leaves cartel; Memorial slams sexist proposal; over 1,000 migrant workers arrested over brawl; Sobyanin may forego pre-election debate; BP earns less from Rosneft than TNK-BP; new trade war with Ukraine; Russia is injured party in Snowden saga, says Kremlin.

Russia’s Uralkali has pulled out of the Belarusian Potash Company, one of the world’s largest potash cartels, to strike out on its own.  This has caused the share prices of other potash producing companies to plunge, and is expected to lead to price wars: ‘It is as if Saudi Arabia decided to leave OPEC’.  The WSJ speculates that ‘Uralkali’s move is a tactic designed to push Belarus back into the fold’, and anticipates a ‘painful adjustment’.  Human rights group Memorial has slammed a nationalist’s proposal to give ‘the fair sex’ two days off work per month for menstruation as ‘improper, unreasonable and nothing close to being serious’.  Sweeping raids by police on Moscow’s marketplaces initially led to the arrests of 470 migrant workers, but now, after two days of raids, the total is being reported as over 1,000.  Police initially had been searching for suspects in connection with a mass attack on an officer who was trying to detain a rape suspect at the Matveyevsky Market earlier this week.  The event has led to a public call for the eradication of ethnic crime, and a series of measures, including the inspection of markets, led to these new arrests.