TODAY: Russian officials see anti-reset conspiracy in spy case; story met with mockery in some media quarters; US assures that issue won’t hurt ties; Clinton and Putin discuss matter.  Major democratic decline reported in Russia; Limonov to form new opposition party for 2011; gulags remembered online; fears for the stability of Central Asia; smuggling; painting diplomacy

Russian officials have reportedly suggested that the suburban spy ring arrests could be a specific attempt by an anti-Russia lobby to undermine the Obama reset.  Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has doused his reaction in sarcasm commenting, ‘the choice of timing was particularly graceful‘.  Mikhail Lyubimov, a writer and former member of the SVR suggests that the FBI manufactured the case to tarnish the image of Russia.  Were the arrests motivated by another political objective?  The Economist suggests ‘that the FBI was encouraged to prosecute this lot as a way of strengthening the hand of President Dmitry Medvedev against the siloviki’.  A certain layer of mockery is palpable in many media reactions to the case: AFP reports that the Russian newspapers see ‘more politics than intelligence’ in the ‘sham spy‘ story.  David Hearst in the Guardian is baffled by what he views as the amateurishness of methods.  ‘It is laughable that they posed any threat to the American people’, adds Simon Jenkins.  ‘Feckless’ and ‘nutty’ are two of the adjectives used to describe the events in this article.  It is not just the lack of secrets that has raises eyebrows, but the expense of such a mission.  Nonetheless certain commentators find the story credible, with ex-double agent Oleg Gordievsky saying that there many be as many as 40-50 couples working in deep-cover in the US; others are not surprised by the allegedly ‘outdated’ methods, arguing human intelligence remains most effective.