TODAY: Medvedev gives broad interview in Wall Street Journal; addresses Kyrgyzstan issue, states belief that Manas airbase should not be permanent; Russia to send security consultants.  President says relationship with Prime Minister effective; Putin vaunts news fighter jet;  adoption agreement to be fast-tracked.  More ‘Putin Results’ books seized; bill to grant rights to seriously ill convicts; ecologists lose Lake Baikal appeal; directly elected mayors to be a thing of the past? 

President Medvedev has given an interview to the Wall Street Journal covering a range of themes, which can be viewed here.  Among the topics discussed was the situation in Kyrgyzstan, which the President described as close to a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’ and voiced concerns over the possibility of Islamist extremists profiting from the state of instability.  He supported Russia’s non-interventionist stance, saying, ‘our Kyrgyz partners have so far recalled their request, in essence, because they should cope with this situation themselves’.  The CSTO will send ‘security specialists’ but not peacekeepers to Kyrgyzstan, RFE/RL reports, ‘a compromise that would allow Moscow to expand its influence in the former Soviet Union’, says Charles Clover in the FT.  The President apparently remains intransigent on the Manas air base, saying ‘it shouldn’t exist forever’.   The Guardian reports that a senior Kyrgyz official has threatened to close the US airbase if Britain refuses to hand over the son of the country’s ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev, who the interim government believes has incited the outbreak of violence.  Today there are reports that the death toll in the country is ‘ten times higher’ than previously estimated, and the number of refugees is reported to have swollen to 400,000.  The former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan has penned a long piece explaining the Soviet backdrop to the current crisis in the Telegraph.