TODAY: Russia looks to prevent food price hikes following import restrictions; new law bans anonymous wifi access in public; dacha activism; Garry Kasparov fights Kremlin for FIDE role.  Donetsk on verge of being recaptured by Ukraine, reports say; Putin-hosted Karabakh talks yield little; Russia-West energy cooperation stays strong.

Having introduced a year long ban on half its agricultural imports from the West, Russia may negotiate a price control agreement with domestic food producers to stop speculative price increases that might have an impact on inflation.  Moscow’s fine-dining elite and its zoo animals are likely to suffer from the restrictions which will benefit alternative suppliers Belarus, Turkey and Brazil.  A threat that Australia will ban supplies of uranium have been rebuffed by Rosatom, which claims Russia has enough of the element for 100 years.  Russia has banned anonymous access to the Internet in public places; Bloomberg notes the irony in how Putin chose to introduce this measure.  The Moscow Times reports on a new kind of activism drawing attention to the nexus of wealth and power: ‘daching‘.  Chess master-turned-Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov has found himself up against the regime in his bid to win the presidency of FIDE.