TODAY: Russia’s investigative chief accused of threatening the life of a reporter; opposition face ongoing questioning; gay rights leader takes propaganda law to ECHR. Washington ratchets up criticism of Russia’s arms sales to Syria; Lavrov remains intransigent. Football clashes will not damage relations say Russia and Poland; wildfire disaster possible, says environmentalists; Nashi founder retreats; fate of Lenin’s corpse causing a stir.

Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of investigative newspaper Novaya Gazeta had told Reuters that he instructed one of his reporters, Sergei Sokolov, to flee the country after the latter received death threats from the bodyguards of Sergei Bastrykin, Chairman of Russia’s Investigative Committee.  Sokolov was, according to Muratov, taken under duress into a forested area and threatened.  Sokolov is believed to have stirred the anger of Bastrykin in late 2010 when he wrote an article accusing him of failing to investigate a massacre of 12 people in southern Russia.  Five prominent journalists, including first deputy editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy radio, Vladimir Varfolomeyev have staged an unsanctioned picket in support of Sokolov by the Investigative Committee’s office in downtown Moscow.  Russian police continue to question opposition figures Aleksei Navalny and Sergei Udaltsov and have carried out further searches at the offices of Navalny’s Fund for Fighting Corruption.  The searches of opposition leader’s homes is ‘a tactic critics said smacked of the dark days of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’, Reuters reports.  Prominent gay rights leader Nikolai Alexeyev has lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights over the St. Petersburg law introducing fines for promoting homosexuality.