President Dmitry Medvedev’s taking to European air space to attend Lech Kaczynski’s funeral in Krakow was seen as ‘a gesture of solidarity‘ with Poland, as many world leaders were prevented from attending the funeral due to volcanic ash, which is continuing to spread and could make its way to Russia’s Far East.  Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Polish archbishop, said that Russia’s response to the crash had gone some way towards healing the wounds of the Katyn massacre, given that so many of those killed had been closely connected to Katyn victims.  Vladimir Frolov calls Russia’s moves in Kyrgyzstan after the revolution ‘a PR coup‘, and The Times reports that the Kyrgyz government has been told that Moscow’s friendliness depends fully on Roza Otunbayeva’s ability to maintain order and deal with social and economic tasks. ‘Russia’s use of so-called soft power mirrored a long policy of American support for civil society in the former Soviet republics,‘ says the New York Times.