TODAY: Putin-critical children’s ombudsman ousted; Medvedev’s governor appointments suggest no clean-up; how a ‘reset’ doesn’t seem to mean a re-START; pressure on poultry talks. Russia’s ‘dirty war’; sunset on Ukraine’s orange revolution? Question marks remain over Chernobyl deaths; theater as platform for social criticism

Children’s ombudsman, Alexei Golovan, who fell foul of the orthodox church for advocating the establishment of a juvenile justice system and openly criticized the state of children’s rights under Vladimir Putin, has been dismissed after just four months, and replaced by Pavel Astakhov, a lawyer with no known experience in human rights.  The Moscow Times looks at Medvedev’s recent spate of hiring and firing of governors, in particular the reappointment of  Primorye Governor Sergei Darkin and Alexander Berdnikov of the Altai republic, both men with allegedly checkered pasts.  An op-ed in the Moscow Times suggests that limiting the number of terms a President can serve would be the smart move for Medvedev.  In the same paper, Dmitry Trenin looks for a new analytical model with which to analyze the Medvedev-Putin diarchy.