TODAY: Medvedev’s star wanes after press conference; Nashi victim of hacker Charlie Sheen prank; rare military whistleblower speaks out; gay rights rally deemed disturbing to children.  Shoot out in South Ossetia;  Israeli espionage; Sakharov remembered
 
Since Medvedev said so little at his press conference, ‘what was the point of the exercise?‘  The Economist has some suggestions.  ‘It was impossible to pinpoint the exact moment of the transformation, but by the time Russian President Dmitri Medvedev left the podium after his first big press conference on Wednesday, he had morphed into a lame duck’, says Simon Shuster in Time magazine.  The BBC has parallel profiles of Medvedev and Putin.  Since his dismissal, former Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov has promoted his party as the sole opposition force in the country.  ‘One doesn’t even need to bribe a Russian court in order to win. Political connections will go further than money’, says the Guardian’s Natalia Antonova on the Artemy Troitsky ‘poodle’ debacle.  Embarrassment for Kremlin youth group Nashi after hackers posted false information suggesting that hell-raising actor Charlie Sheen would be a guest at a Kremlin-sponsored summer camp to promote a healthy lifestyle.  A veteran of the Chechen war, ex-Major Igor Matveyev, has told reporters that officers were fed dog food to save money at an Interior Ministry troops base in Vladivostok.