TODAY: Khodorkovsky and Lebedev found guilty of embezzlement charges; Yukos founder judges Putin to be ‘pitiable’; US cables lament ‘rule-of-law gloss’; uncover deplorable prison conditions. Medvedev in Q+A cautions politicians against commenting on Khodorkovsky; takes different line on opposition to Putin. START passes in duma; FSB looking for merger with SVR? Anti-ethnic conflict protest in Moscow; new Gulag film; snow freezes activity in the capital

Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev have been found guilty of money laundering by Judge Victor Danilkin at the culmination of their second trial, which has widely been seen as ‘a test of President Medvedev’s stated resolve to reform Russia’s judiciary and confront its notorious political partiality‘.  The verdict confirms the predictions of Khodorkovsky’s wife, Inna, who told SNOB magazine that, ‘My husband will stay in prison till 2012, that’s for sure. And who knows what will happen after that? No one’.   The court said it dropped some of the charges against the two men because the statute of limitations expired, but did not provide details; the two prisoners await sentencing.  A live broadcast was not permitted by the Khamovniki court, preventing over 100 journalists from covering the event.  Khodorkovsky has argued in a newspaper article that Putin has become the victim of his own machinations: ‘I suddenly realised I was sorry for this man – no longer young, but vigorous and horribly lonely in the face of a vast and unsympathetic country’.  The US embassy cables reveal deep cynicism about the validity of the trial: ‘it shows the effort that the GOR is willing to expend in order to save face, in this case by applying a superficial rule-of-law gloss to a cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity’.  The leaked cables, provided by the Guardian, also offer an unnerving insight into Russia’s prison system.