TODAY: EU-Russia summit begins in shadow of E.coli vegetable dispute; Defense Minister talks of arms race with NATO.  Pearl Ensign trial underway; hurdles for summer camp Seliger; anarchists behind bomb attack; Muslim rector slain in Dagestan.  Kremlin announces war on drugs; putting the Vegas in St Petersburg; could culture soothe Russia-UK ties?

Today the Russia-EU summit in Nizhny Novgorod begins with the ‘vegetable scandal’ likely to dominate proceedings, though visa relaxation and gas pipelines are also on the agenda.  Russia will apparently uphold its ban on the import of European Union vegetables as long as the Union fails to pinpoint the source of the E. Coli outbreak which has claimed the lives of 22 people.  Despite the cucumber kerfuffle, ‘This will be a routine summit with no big fights and no major agreements signed. Arguably, the two sides could save a huge amount of time and money by holding a video conference or even just exchanging position papers’, says Fraser Cameron in the Moscow Times.  NATO and Russia may have failed to overcome their differences on the issue of missile defense at a meeting in Brussels, but the head of the Western military alliance is apparently sanguine on the prospect of future cooperation.  Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov has meanwhile returned to Cold War rhetoric stating that a failure to agree on BMD will leave Russia no choice but to engage in an arms race.