MOSCOW (Reuters) – The squeak of police boots on the dormitory floor is the first thing Yevgeny Barkhatov remembers of the morning he and some 50 other music students at the Moscow Conservatory were awoken and forced to enlist in the army.

“They took our documents and passports and drove us off in the bus waiting for us downstairs,” said Barkhatov, a 19-year old clarinetist at Russia’s most prestigious music conservatory.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian human rights group accused law enforcement agencies on Friday of kidnapping and torturing ordinary Muslims as part of Moscow’s broadening fight against Islamist extremism.

The accusation comes as Moscow struggles to contain violence in its mainly Muslim North Caucasus — a region where an increasingly tough insurgency killed 1,000 people in 2009.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A court sentence on ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky will hurt Russia’s international reputation and endanger its relations with major trading partners, possibly discouraging investment in an economy which needs modernising.

Khodorkovsky, who fell out with the Kremlin, faces six more years in jail after a judge sentenced him on Thursday for theft and money-laundering in a ruling which German Chancellor Angela Merkel said appeared to be politically motivated.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A court sentence on ex-oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky will hurt Russia’s international reputation and endanger its relations with major trading partners, possibly discouraging investment in an economy which needs modernizing.

Khodorkovsky, who fell out with the Kremlin, faces six more years in jail after a judge sentenced him on Thursday for theft and money-laundering in a ruling which German Chancellor Angela Merkel said appeared to be politically motivated. [nLDE6BT16W]

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian judge who declared jailed ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of stealing 350 million tonnes of oil worth billions of dollars edged toward a sentence this week in the high-profile case.

Below are the most likely scenarios:

PRISON SENTENCE OF SIX MORE YEARS

Political analysts and investors expect Khodorkovsky to be sentenced to six more years in prison, as requested by prosecutors at his second trial. This would keep him in jail until late 2017.

MOSCOW, Dec 28 (Reuters) – A Russian judge who declared
jailed ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty of stealing 350
million tonnes of oil worth billions of dollars edged toward a
sentence this week in the high-profile case.

Below are the most likely scenarios:

PRISON SENTENCE OF SIX MORE YEARS

Political analysts and investors expect Khodorkovsky to be
sentenced to six more years in prison, as requested by
prosecutors at his second trial. This would keep him in jail
until late 2017.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia hit back at Britain on Wednesday for expelling a diplomat from its London embassy for spying, calling the move groundless and saying Moscow had been forced to respond in kind.

The mutual diplomatic expulsions between Russia and Britain are the first since 2007, when relations fell to a low after Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko was killed in London with a rare radioactive isotope.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin unveiled a new World War Two memorial on Tuesday and attacked his old foe, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, for “turning his back” on shared Soviet history.

The monument, titled “We fought fascism together,” at the Moscow district of Poklonnaya Gora shows Georgian soldier Meliton Kantaria and Russian Mikhail Yegorov, who raised the Soviet banner over the German Reichstag in captured Berlin in 1945.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday it was in full contact with the international space station and its Soyuz shuttle after a brief loss of contact with the craft that will soon become the mainstay of the international space program.

Russia’s mission control had lost communication with the Soyuz craft for several hours, Interfax news agency reported, quoting an unnamed source in the space industry.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday Russia must improve working conditions to stem an exodus of its brightest scientists that is crippling innovation and impeding plans to diversify the economy.

Critics cite corruption and Soviet-style bureaucracy as the largest obstacles to boosting science and technology in Russia, famous for educating world-famous scientists only to see them work abroad.