TODAY: Abuse of office in Kamchatka; police reform a pipe dream?  Stop and START; deja vu in the New York Times; Russia issue crops up again in Ukraine presidential race; South Ossetia emphasizes Russian ties; Poland spy story; Christmas Medvedev’s time of forgiving (the lucky few); architectural preserver dies

The mayor of a town in Kamchatka has been suspended due to alleged abuse of office, which involved jumping the queue to buy limited access apartments with public funds.  Robert Coalson looks back in anger at last year’s Gazprom helicopter-crash-revealing illegal poaching scandal, whose making public via internet photos suggested that new media tools could help exert pressure on the government. The case of whistleblower police Major Aleksei Dymovsky, who is now facing criminal charges, demonstrates, he suggests, otherwise.  Why ‘2010 does not look like the year of reform for the Russian police’ on RFE/RL.