President Dmitry Medvedev has made a video address calling for increased political competition, complaining that progress is impossible ‘if the opposition hasn’t the slightest chance of winning in an honest fight‘, and that the current, unrelenting dominance of United Russia could transform stability into ‘stagnation‘.  The President is currently taking advice from his Twitter followers, he says.  Russia’s Foreign Ministry says it will not take Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili’s peaceful pledges seriously until they are ‘put on paper and acquire legal force‘, saying that it has been asking him to do so since 2008.  The Romanian Foreign Minister has called for Russia’s withdrawal of its troops from Moldova, calling their presence ‘an anachronism and a contradiction. We welcome this new openness between Russia and NATO.‘  Time Magazine reviews recent developments in the relationship between Russia and NATO, wondering why Dmitry Medvedev’s expression of distrust (‘Either we participate in full, exchange information, answer for the resolution of this or that problem, or we don’t participate at all‘) wasn’t made more of an issue of.  NPR looks at the unpopularity of the idea that Russia should assist with military efforts in Afghanistan.