President Putin emphasizes stance on continuing military invasion in speech, flaunts nuclear forces. Putin stated that last year's GDP (gross domestic product) growth rate was 3.6%.
Novaya Gazeta, an independent Russian newspaper known for its reporting critical of the Putin administration, announced that its editor-in-chief, Sergei Sokolov, was temporarily detained by authorities. Mr. Sokoloff was detained in Moscow on suspicion of destroying the confidence of the Russian military, and subsequently fined by a Moscow court 30,000 rubles, or approximately 50,000 yen in Japanese yen.