TODAY: Total CEO perishes in Moscow air crash; Polish parliamentary speaker says Putin suggested split of Ukraine in 2008; Lavrov sees little positive in current U.S-Russia relations. Soldiers’ Mothers Committee activist released after two days in prison; Yelena Panfilova elected to Transparency International; Russia’s market woes.

The chief executive of French oil giant Total, Christophe de Margerie, along with three French crew members, has died in a collision between his corporate jet and a snow plough at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport.  It has been confirmed by the authorities that the driver of the snow removal machine was drunk.  Polish parliamentary speaker Radoslaw Sikorski has told U.S. magazine ‘Politico’  that in 2008 President Putin proposed to Poland’s then-prime minister Donald Tusk that Ukraine be divided between the two countries.  Sikorski has subsequently said of his interview, ‘some of my words were misinterpreted‘.  Poland may deport a number of Russian diplomats from the country in an espionage scandal.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has described relations between Moscow and Washington as being at ‘rock bottom‘ and that they would only improve when ‘unilateral sanctions‘ were abandoned.  Lavrov has criticised what he calls Washington’s ‘double standards in order to implement geopolitical designs,’ regarding Islamic State in particular.  Attempts to reach a breakthrough on the Ukraine conflict through talks in Italy have proved fruitless.