Decline note taken round Russian city once denied power (10)
I believe the answer is:
retrograde
'decline' is the definition.
(I know that retrograde is a more specific form of the action decline)
'note taken round russian city once denied power' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'note' could be 're' (as in do-re-mi) and 're' is found within the answer.
'round' could be 'o' (round can mean a round object) and 'o' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for retrograde that I've seen before include "degenerate" , "Reverse" , "Going back" , "Backward" , "inverse" .)