Even though it isn’t officially out there yet, over 1m people are playing the game in Russia, writes Ilya Khrennikov

Given the noses in the southwest which were put out of joint last Friday by Conor McCarthy’s piece in these pages, should we start with off-field competition?

Some 500 people have rallied in central Moscow to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and political reform.

A Russian state television network says Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who sent millions to their deaths in the Great Purge of the 1930s, has been voted the country’s third-greatest historical figure.