United Russia’s ‘party position‘ is that it wants Vladimir Putin back in the Kremlin next year.  Russia has banned the hunting of polar bears this year, waiving the quota granted it by a U.S.-Russian commission, and applauding itself on Putin’s website.  But the World Wildlife Fund is unimpressed, saying that the ban is only continuing because authorities have no way of monitoring how many bears are actually killed.  Today marks the tenth anniversary of Gazprom’s takeover of the NTV television channel, which many see as the starting point for television’s gradually becoming ‘a staple of the regime‘.  RFE/RL reports on NTV and the decline of independent media.  A criminal investigation has been opened into three Moscow policemen over their suspected sale of mobile phone data to contract killers.   In their defense, the policemen say that they had a judge’s permission to access the mobile phone records of Andrei Kozlov, deputy chairman of the Russian Central Bank, who was murdered in 2006.