TODAY: Protest rally against illegal police activities thwarted by police; major anti-government protest planned in Kaliningrad; CPJ calls for clarification of Estemirova murder investigation; Smolensk mayor faces extortion charges.  Viktor Yanukovich heads West; France defends sale of Mistral as Medvedev lands in Paris; Sochi beckons amid Olympic gloom; concerns for freedom of reporting about the games.  Could Rechnik be saved?  Russian tanks.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called on Russia to unveil the details of its inquiry into the death of rights activist Natalia Estemirova, the Washington Post reports.  Opposition activists are reportedly planning a 15,000 person rally in Kaliningrad to protest against the power vertical ‘dictatorship’ and gloomy economic climes on March 20.  Meanwhile opposition activists were allegedly prevented from holding a demonstration about how to resist illegal police conduct, by law enforcement officers themselves.  The mayor of Smolensk Eduard Kachanovsky has been arrested on charges of extortion, giving weight to calls that direct mayoral elections should be abolished.