TODAY: Man dies in police custody after alleged torture; new opposition rally planned for St Petersburg; Reporters Without Borders concerned over web use in Russia; Pussy Riot members charged.  Putin’s pricey election campaign; left wing forces to unite?  Russia and West continue to clash on Syria; Lavrov urges Libya bombings probe; helicopter crash kills two.  HIV rates up.

The chief of police in Kazan has been suspended following the death of a detainee in police custody last week.  Relatives of the victim, as well as doctors, have alleged that he was violently tortured by officers prior to his death.  Kremlin critics in St Petersburg reportedly plan to hold a rally of 15,000 people in the city’s center on March 24.  ‘[T]he hard graft for the opposition is now just starting,’ says the Guardian.  Weary Russian media employees have taken a (humorous) stand against the demonstrations in Moscow with a Facebook group.  The Moscow city authorities apparently plan no changes to the federal law on rallies, despite rumors to the contrary.  US Ambassador to Russia and opposition sympathizer Michael McFaul has told the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington that Russia is undergoing a ‘civil society renewal’.  In its 2012 “Enemies of the Internet” report, Reporters Without Borders has found that there are concerns about Russia’s respect of Internet freedom.  Hooliganism charges have been filed against two members of the riot grrl band Pussy Riot following their ‘punk prayer’ in a Moscow cathedral.   Posters in support of the band which have appeared in Novosibirsk have brought a new meaning to iconoclasm, the Moscow Times reports.