I would like to pour a spoonful of legal tar in the barrel of political honey presented at the United Russia party congress. To paraphrase Hegel: not all that is politically possible is legally valid.

For some reason, people think that Vladimir Putin’s third term is entirely constitutional as long as there is a gap between the second and third terms in the form of Dmitry Medvedev’s single term. As if this one interim term totally alters the political and legal reality.

Read Vladimir Pastukhov, doctor of law, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford

In answering writer Zakhar Prilepin's question on how oil trader Gennady Timchenko became a billionaire, Vladimir Putin retorted, “Whatever has to do with his business interests is his own business. I have never got involved in it and don’t plan to. At the same time, I hope he will ever stick his nose into my business...”

Read Alexey Polukhin

Novaya Gazeta learned that those travelling in the Volkswagen were the wife of the interior minister and her friend, a high-ranking employee in the investigation agencies. They were taken to the hospital with minor injuries along with the driver... “There is no criminal case”, say