TODAY: Duma votes to station troops in Georgia’s breakaway regions; WWF report pessimistic on Russia’s environmental footprint; Khodorkovsky appeal rejected; judges abusing rights to close trials. Russia’s State Duma has unanimously voted to ratify treaties with Georgia’s breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, allowing Moscow to station 7,600 troops there ‘to protect them from Georgian attacks’. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet in Moscow to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi will visit Russia this week to discuss energy and military partnership. Ukraine’s Ukrspetsexport says Russia wants to push it out of the arms market. Did Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak’s release have anything to do with Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin’s support of him, wonders Yulia Latynina in a column on Russia’s debt and potential company seizures by the state. Why has Russia’s financial crisis not drawn more public protests? Perhaps because ‘people think such activists are crazy’? A liberal Russian political alliance blasts the government for the crisis.