“The Kremlin says Russia is a country of great opportunity. But my trial demonstrates that it is also a country of great risks.” – Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Cloudy Precipice / Tom Burgher Gallery
Despite the recent spate of international news over the past week, from the hamburger summit in DC to the G20 in Toronto to Russian spies in Suburbia USA, underlying global economics has not changed and talk of a double-dip recession has revived. Even the dreaded “d” word was uttered by NYTimes’s Paul Krugman in his assessment of the US economy. Signs of a global weakening is evidenced by the fall in world equity indices, weak US home sales and China’s manufacturing growth is weakening as its government reduces stimulus. Debate rages on the effects of deficits on the economy. While the two sides debate the merits of deficit reduction over stimulus spending, the world economy feels like it is again at a precipice.
In the most recent Reuters’ Russian analysis, three factors remain unchanges from their last report in April: oil prices, political risk and insurgency. For the 2010 budget the Kremlin used a $75 barrel estimate, but with crude oil prices falling under $73 a barrel, the Kremlin may have to return to the capital markets trough and isuue more debt to cover budget deficits.
Medvedev understands the need for Russia to diversify its economy and made a major international push last week with his visit to Silicon Valley. However, it still remains to be seen how the power struggle is resolved. The 2012 presidential election presents political risks for investors and many anaylsts predict that:
Russia is unlikely to lure the level of investment or international support it deserves as long as Putin and his ensemble remain publicly engaged.
With the tandem leadership jostling for advantage, it remains to be seen if Medvedev’s push for modernization can resist the pull of Putin. In addition to a change of guard in the Kremlin, Reuters cites the release or acquittal of Mikhail Khodorkovsky as a sign of liberalization and a “bellwether” of Russian policy.
However, current signs point to the status quo as the authorities refuse to investigate into the suspect death of Hermitage Capital’s Sergey Magnitsky in pre-trial detention.
James Beadle
Source: PRIME-TASS
Contributed by James Beadle, a private investment consultant
MOSCOW, Jun 23 (PRIME-TASS) — Since 2003 former Yukos executives Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev have been incarcerated in Russia on charges of tax evasion. At present, as their eight year stint enters its final stages, the two are on trial once more, charged with stealing millions of tonnes of oil (reputedly the same oil that they didn’t pay taxes on).
The Yukos case has always been of fundamental significance to Russia investors. The original arrests marked the end of what might be called the “liberal progressive” period of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. As Yukos was transferred to the state through a series of corrupted political interventions, so Putin’s policies became increasingly harsh.
His efforts to placate investors by offering up Gazprom delivered huge profits to a minority, but had little structural impact. And although the Russian market soared from 2004-2008, the costs and implications of the Yukos case also lingered and stacked up. Russia became increasingly corrupted as the judiciary ceased any pretence of impartiality and the bureaucracy found its powers rejuvenated. The one-party system rebounded from 15 years in the wilderness.
Today, Russia faces a new set of challenges. Although it has not acknowledged the costs of nationalist policies and political risk, unleashed by the prosecution of the nation’s former richest man, it publicly recognises that dependence on oil and gas revenues is a limited and dangerous strategy.
As Khodorkovsky and Lebedev labour their way through their second show-trial, Russia’s new president is seeking to demonstrate that the nation is changing, that business risks are on the decline and that foreign investors are welcome, wanted even.
If the facts of the Yukos case were clean cut, or even uncertain, then the trial would be of limited importance; but the scale of the farce taking place in the Moscow courtroom is rapidly becoming a political embarrassment. Few Russia specialists, this one included, expect a fair hearing, or an honest outcome. But, as the evidence stacks up against the prosecution, so the case gains importance as a litmus test of how much has changed since Medvedev came to power on a promise to end corruption and clean up the judiciary.
In recent court sessions, Khodorkovsky has cross examined a series of high profile politicians from the Putin era: former central banker Viktor Gerashenko, former Prime Minster Mikhail Kasyanov (now an embattled opposition leader), former Economics Minster German Gref (now head of Sberbank) and incumbent Industry and Trade Minister Viktor Khristenko.
All have, to a greater or lesser extent, come out against the prosecution, stating variously that no oil was stolen, that transfer pricing was legal and normal practise or that they were not aware of any theft.
The cynical argument would be to say that this new freedom of speech – which would have been inconceivable just a few years ago – is an effort to make the trial look fair before putting the pair away again. The reality is that something has shifted in Russia.
Not to say that we should expect an honest or open result. Yukos investors are currently prosecuting the government for $100 bln in the European Court of Human Rights. (Note that there was no sign of contingency for this case in the pricing of Russia’s recent Eurobond.) A victory for the defendants would certainly increase the risk of Russia being put on the hook for an extremely large sum in this related case.
More important, it would also discredit the entire Putin era, undermining much of the power vertical that has been so meticulously constructed.
The sad fact is that Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are likely to be kept in jail for a long time yet. Many senior investors will talk about why this is justified. The truth is that it will continue to sustain the risk premium Russia faces as an investment destination. (The true cost of the policies that began with the prosecution of Yukos – in terms of reputation, investor risk premium and lost opportunity – are unmeasurable, but certainly higher than the $100 bln being sought by Yukos shareholders.)
Freeing Khodorkovsky and Lebedev would be a bold move implying that things are really on the mend in Russia. It would boost investor interest and bring a difficult transitional chapter to a close. Unfortunately, with so many of the victors of that chapter still in power (is it a coincidence that there is a lengthy article about Igor Sechin in the FT this week?) such an outcome is unlikely.
At last week’s St Petersburg Economic forum, President Medvedev announced the elimination of capital gains tax on long-term fixed investment projects. It is pertinent that Russia is doing what it can to sustain high returns as economic growth has slowed and risk remains high.
Witnesses at the Khodorkovsky trial have proven that things are changing in Russia. But freedom of speech is one thing, independent judiciary is quite another.
The case is likely to confirm my 2010 outlook that the changes under-way fall short of what is needed for Russia to embark on an optimal development path, but we should never forget that in Russia the unexpected is always possible.
End
EDITORIALS
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
RUSSIA’S GOVERNMENT has calculated that it needs better relations with the West to attract more foreign investment and modern technology, according to a paper by its foreign ministry that leaked to the press last month. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has recently made conciliatory gestures to Poland, while President Dmitry Medvedev sealed a nuclear arms treaty with President Obama. At the United Nations, Russia has agreed to join Western powers in supporting new sanctions against Iran.
Moscow’s new friendliness, however, hasn’t led to any change in its repressive domestic policies. The foreign ministry paper says Russia needs to show itself as a democracy with a market economy to gain Western favor. But Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev have yet to take steps in that direction. There have been no arrests in the more than a dozen outstanding cases of murdered journalists and human rights advocates; a former KGB operative accused by Scotland Yard of assassinating a dissident in London still sits in the Russian parliament.
Perhaps most significantly, the Russian leadership is allowing the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oil executive who has become the country’s best-known political prisoner, to go forward even though it has become a showcase for the regime’s cynicism, corruption and disregard for the rule of law. Mr. Khodorkovsky, who angered Mr. Putin by funding opposition political parties, was arrested in 2003 and convicted on charges of tax evasion. His Yukos oil company, then Russia’s largest, was broken up and handed over to state-controlled firms.
A second trial of Mr. Khodorkovsky is nearing its completion in Moscow, nearly a year after it began. Its purpose is transparent: to prevent the prisoner’s release when his first sentence expires next year. The new charges are, as Mr. Putin’s own former prime minister testified last week, absurd: Mr. Khodorkovsky and an associate, Platon Lebedev, are now accused of embezzling Yukos’s oil production, a crime that, had it occurred, would have made their previously alleged crime of tax evasion impossible.
Mr. Khodorkovsky, who acquired his oil empire in the rough and tumble of Russia’s transition from communism, is no saint, but neither is he his country’s Al Capone, as Mr. Putin has claimed. In fact, he is looking more and more like the prisoners of conscience who have haunted previous Kremlin regimes. In the past several years he has written numerous articles critiquing Russia’s corruption and lack of democracy, including one on our op-ed page last month.
Mr. Obama raised the case of Mr. Khodorkovsky last year, and the State Department’s most recent human rights report said the trial “raised concerns about due process and the rule of law.” But the administration has not let this obvious instance of persecution, or Mr. Putin’s overall failure to ease domestic repression, get in the way of its “reset” of relations with Moscow. If the United States and leading European governments would make clear that improvements in human rights are necessary for Moscow to win trade and other economic concessions, there is a chance Mr. Putin would respond. If he does not, Western governments at least would have a clearer understanding of where better relations stand on the list of his true priorities.
Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr./Bloomberg
Despite President Medvedev’s modernization initatives creating a Russian Silicon Valley, establishing of an international financial center as well as a new Russian identity, fundamental elements in the Russian economy and society remain broken.
The recent spasms caused by the Eurozone’s response to Greece’s potential default have roiled global markets, erased gains for the year and pushed markets back levels from last fall. Russia’s stock market have followed suit and is now below its 200-day moving average. These global economic winds are difficult to manage as Russian IPOs continue to be delayed such as the $300 million RusAgro and the $200 million Strikeforce Mining & Resources (SMR).
However other IPO postponements can’t be simply chalked up to poor credit markets: Uralchem’s $600 million IPO was pulled after failing to meet ecological standards and Rusal, the first Russian company to IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has fallen 31% from its IPO price, which is sowing doubts in foreign investors’ minds about the long-term profitability of debt-ladden Russian companies. It also doesn’t build investor confidence when Rusal’s CEO Oleg Deripaska gives himself a $70 million IPO bonus three months after Rusal’s IPO even as the stock continued its slide.
Russia’s infrastructure problems are well-known internally and externally, given Moscow’s predilection for putting politics ahead of economic concerns. In the latest World Competitiveness Yearbook 2010 from Swiss business school IMD in Lausanne, Russia’s ranking continues to decline in comparison to other BRIC countries despite its natural resource and higher GDP advantages. The Yearbook notes:
Russia is richer than it is competitive. Per capita GDP ranks 38th in the world, but its IMD ranking has slipped eight positions since 2007 to 51st—the lowest among the so-called BRIC countries. Among the main reasons: poor productivity and efficiency, weak management practices, unfavorable prices, and low marks for health/environment. Russia does a lot better in scientific infrastructure, fiscal policy, and international investment.
Attention was drawn to Russia’s lack of rule of law and corruption this week through the hunger strike of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and New York Times report on unsolved attacks on journalists who report on local corruption.
Khodorkovsky’s hunger strike sought to raise awareness that the legal reforms signed by President Dmitry Medvedev on April 7, 2010 are being sabotaged. The law, which resulted from President Medvedev’s efforts to halt abuses by officials of the criminal justice system from attacking legitimate businesses, and to make criminal law more humane after the death of Sergei Magnitsky, ordering that the courts can no longer use arrest as a pre-trial measure of restraint in cases involving allegations of certain economic crimes, including the alleged crimes in Khodorkovsky’s ongoing case. Through an intermediary, President Medvedev acknowledged Khodorkovsky’s plea and so ended the hunger strike.
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 32 reporters have been killed since the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of perestroika and glasnost. As these unsolved persecutions show, corruption in Russia seeps down from above and spreads from below unchecked by any semblance of law or justice.
Khodorkovsky’s second trial continues to display the kind of “legal nihilism” Medvedev claims to end. Yuri Schmidt in today’s Wall Street Journal writes that François Zimeray, the French Ambassador for Human Rights visited the court last month, observed that :
“Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s resistance to being broken by the system has made him an icon for defenders of human rights.” He concluded that not just one man, but rather Russia’s future, is on trial.
For President Medvedev’s modernization to take place, much more needs to be done than creating fantasy technology and financial centers and redefining the national character.
Reuters recently released an article outlining three key risks in Russia: the variable price of oil, political shake up in the Kremlin and further insurgency attacks. Though the world’s largest energy producer, Russia’s manufacturing, construction and retail industries continues to contract as domestic consumption and foreign investment continues to lag, increasing the economy’s dependence on oil prices for growth.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remains popular and the driver behind the co-governance team with President Dmitry Medvedev. Despite highlighting their differences and indicating Medvedev’s intentions of political and judicial reform, Reuters notes that Russian markets would rebound only if Putin remained in place. The maintenance of the status quo despite Russia’s world renown for government corruption and weak rule of law seems curious. With foreign investors, such as IKEA, Hermitage Capital, and now HBK investments scaling back or pulling out of Russia due to corruption and extortion, why would the markets value Russian companies more if the status quo remained?
And how does the continued expropriation of private business by government officials add to Russia’s economic capital?
The extraction of Russia’s economic and natural resources by the politically connected few leads to only self-enrichment. Perhaps this self-enrichment would be tolerable if the proceeds were reinvested in Russia and the Russian people, but this is rarely the case. What Russia needs is investment to update oil and pipeline infrastructure, capital to encourage innovation and a stronger rule of law to benefit all Russian people.
Russia’s most famous political prisoner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky began his spirited defense yesterday against his Kafka-esque second trial. The government charged Khodorkovsky and his business partner Platon Lebedev with stealing 2.5 billion barrels of YUKOS’s crude oil or a third of the United States’ entire annual consumption of oil.
The trial is also viewed domestically and abroad as a test of Medvedev’s commitment to ending “legal nihilism” and his power and control within the Kremlin. Medvedev even started a national anti-corruption drive this March. According the Associated Press,
The trial is considered a test of whether President Dmitry Medvedev, himself a lawyer, is serious about reforming Russia’s judicial system. In other cases, judges have come forward to complain they face political pressure.
Only time will tell if Medvedev makes good on his words.
VLAST (Power) is a documentary on how liberty and the rule of law have become casualties in modern Russia through the lens of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s imprisonment. Director Cathryn Collins interviews Khodorkovsky’s family, associates and politicians to create a picture of how Khodorkovsky’s pro-democracy actions were stiffled as Russia marched towards a more authoritative government.
Vlast (Power) takes an unvarnished look at the consolidation of power in an oil-dependent Russia, revealing a frightening picture of repression and retribution reminiscent of Stalin’s regime.
VLAST (Power) premiers at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on Monday, February 22, 2010 at 8:30pm with another showing on Wednesday, February 24, 1010 at 4:30p at MoMA. Director Cathryn Collins and other Khodorkovsky associates will be on hand to answer questions after each showing. Tickets can be purchased here. More information here.
After dragging its feet for four years, the Russian parliament ratified the European Court of Human Rights’ (ECHR) Protocol 14 earlier today. Russia had been the only country out of 47 participating states to refuse to ratify Protocol 14, which improves the efficiency of the Court. The current process has created a backlog of complaints, a third of which are filed against Russia.
Dmitri F. Vyatkin, Russian Parliamentary member mentioned that the impasse was overcome because the ECHR had addressed Russia’s concerns by providing written commitments that Russian judges would be included in reviews of potential cases against Russia, the Court would not begin investigating complaints before cases were formally accepted and the Court would not have new powers to enforce rulings.
Taken together this sounds like Russia wants to transform the ECHR into a Russian court: by hearing complaints against Russia that the Russian government approves of, not delving too much in to the details of complaints filed and if the complaint is accepted for the Court to have no ability to enforce its ruling.
However, Thomas Hammarberg, the human rights commissioner of the Leaders of the Council of Europe, presents a different view of Russia’s approval of Protocol 14, that Russia’s concerns where heard but ultimately Russia will be held to the same rules that apply to other members and that no changes to the protocol were made.
Leaving for now, what Russia’s ratification of Protocol 14 actually means for the ECHR, a central question remains, “What propelled Russia to ratify the protocol after all these years?”
“Smoothing over differences” appears to be the official reason media outlets are reporting, however there may be other reasons political and financial reasons why Russia is offering this carrot to the West.
Earlier this week, the $100 billion lawsuit YUKOS v. Russia was postponed for the third time because two Russian representatives were unavailable. Perhaps the Russian authorities feel that ratification of Protocal 14 could pave the way for this case to be dismissed.
Additionally, the Financial Times reported earlier this week that Russian companies would be seeking $90 billion over the next two years to finance debt restructuring and capital improvements and perhaps to rebuild the coffers for politically connected Russian business owners who saw their fortunes collapse during the 2008 financial crisis. As demonstrated with the Rusal IPO, concerns over the management of Russian companies remain and ratifying Protocol 14 may be a signal to the investment community that Russia wants to play nice.
Russia may see ratifying Protocol 14 satifying many goals: to reduce the effectiveness complaints against Russia in the ECHR while reassuring investors that Russia abides by the rule of law. But as the trial against former YUKOS chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a Russian policeman’s open letter to end authorized corruption demonstrate, Russia remains a feudal state, where
It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.
On Thursday, January 14th the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is hearing the case of YUKOS Oil Company v. Russian Federation, the first time in six years of litigation that both sides will meet face-to-face in a legal battle on the Russian authorities expropriation of YUKOS and its assets beginning in 2003. Foreign policy and Russian officials have acknowledged that the imprisonment of YUKOS’s CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky was due to political reasons stemming from his support of opposition parties.
Meanwhile, the Rusal continues on its IPO path, even as more doubts about the process have surfaced. Its controlling shareholder Oleg Deripaska continues to be linked to organized crime, was refused a visa to enter the United States on those grounds and has received millions in government money funnelled through Russian state-run Vnesheconombank (VEB), controlled by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
YUKOS’s Mikhail Khodorkovsky is being charged in a second round of trumped up charges while Rusal’s Oleg Deripaska is being rewarded for his cooperation and collaboration with the Russian government, stating publicly that he would transfer Rusal back to the government at any time saying, “If the state says we need to give it up, we’ll give it up.”
Via the EU-Russia Centre, Der Welt published an article on why Mikhail Khodorkovsky remains significant to Russia’s economic development. According to the article “at least one third of the population expressed according to the survey Institute Levada-Center at the beginning of the conviction that people like Khodorkovsky could help with their know-how of the country in crisis.”
The full article translated below via Google Translate:
Khodorkovsky’s long shadow
Yukos was once an example to be established early on ethics and years later Vladimir Putin again lives in fear of the dead and a group jailed billionaire
Eduard Stein
December 2009, 04:00 Clock 14h
For some reason, Vladimir Putin, sensing a need for clarification. After six years of evasive answers and arcane information about the rise and fall of the government-imposed oil company Yukos was Russia’s most powerful man on television two weeks ago suddenly on the offensive. For years, curious person urged the former President and current Prime Minister, a plausible explanation. Vain. Finally, it was a dish that had sent the once-largest oil company in the country several years ago in the bankruptcy, said Putin and his top officials free of the responsibility: Finally, the court on a repeated sentence or the release would be the Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest decide.
But it was still Putin himself, who forestalled suddenly in the course of his TV Question Time the court and in unexpected detail, commented on the case. What should spontaneously appear, therefore, ultimately came more through-composed. Do not go there about when to release for whom, “said the Prime Minister go there so that repetition of such economic crimes. They also maintained that the money from the auction of Yukos assets RULE in social housing has been set, “Putin said to the astonished spectators”. Then, to dare the legal tightrope: the ex-security chief of Yukos, Alexei Pitschugin, who has been convicted of three contract killings in 2007 to life imprisonment without the guilt, “has clearly acted in the interest of and on behalf of the owner.
Since Putin knows his opponent over the court, “said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who himself was never accused of murder, from prison. You may still call upon the Premier to give evidence.
In seven days on the beginning of the Causa Yukos, the topic is thus again a household word. For years, the Russian authorities had hoped that the interest in his most prominent prisoner, who was once estimated at 15 billion U.S. dollars assets, more and more abated. And in the end perhaps totally dies. Too much the case had tarnished the image of the rulers and the country already. No other matter beyond the Chechen war had made the perceptive world opinion against Russia’s development under Putin. No subject had clearly signaled observers abroad that began with Putin after a decade of attempts in a market economy and democracy in a new era of statism and the authoritarian power vertical in Russia.
None other than 25 October 2003 was so obvious. Early in the morning landed on that day a Russian Tupoljew with Khodorkovsky aboard in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. A few minutes later, the domestic intelligence service FSB special forces stormed the plane. “When I saw the siege was everything to me clearly,” to the then forty-year multi-billionaire said.
Already months before a string of incidents had indicated that was the most modern and most efficient oil company in the country with his boss and major shareholder in the crosshairs of investigators. What followed after the arrest, was an unprecedented geheimdienstgeschulten tug of war between the Kremlin and the relentless head of a mega company with 105,00 employees. At the end Khodorkovsky was convicted of fraud and tax evasion in 2005 with eight years imprisonment in the remotest Siberia. Subsequently, Yukos was filleted and mostly incorporated into the state oil company Rosneft, which rose to the market leader.
Since the spring of this year, Khodorkovsky is in Moscow again in court. Shake about the new indictment not only Putin’s critics around: the tycoon is the whole Yukos flow have been stolen. Previously he had been convicted solely because of tax evasion for the Yukos oil. Now the prosecutor has accused him of having illegally sold oil worth 20 billion euros. In extreme cases, this latest charge threaten to bring more than 20 years in prison.
One should remember the Mafia boss Al Capone, the “30 year old was formally sentenced in the U.S. for tax fraud – but in reality for all crimes he committed,” Putin initiated at the end of November in France. His answers to answer the questions about Khodorkovsky was drastic. He likened his rival on this occasion with the U.S. billion fraudster Bernard Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in prison. Nobody has felt the injustice and “even a beep given by itself,” complained Vladimir Putin. Why just the other Causa Khodorkovsky with a measure would be measured?
Because it was politically motivated to be Khodorkovsky’s lawyers never tires of stressing. That’s what Putin himself admitted behind closed doors, said a few months ago, none other than Mikhail Kasyanov, the beginning of the affair, Prime Minister under Putin. The former president had echauffiert about the fact that Khodorkovsky without permission of the Kremlin’s next Liberal parties also began to sponsor the Communists,’ said Kasyanov. Immediately after his assumption of office, Putin had called all the oligarchs to abide by political non-interference. All other tycoons, who like Khodorkovsky, seized during the privatizations of the 90s to questionable nature and at bargain prices, huge fortunes under the nail, and great power within the state itself, had understood Putin’s message – and Khodorkovsky was warned. The wealth had gone to his head and caused a feeling of integrity, he would tell later companions. “Was Chodor,” as his intimates call him, just a strong person with principles to keep his followers against it.
Khodorkovsky has indeed has strong international support. Unlike court proceedings, the lobbying machine of the volatile Yukos billionaire runs very fast. Together with lawyers, they instigated in an information war with the Kremlin, which they have won very early on. In early December, they also achieved a real part of success: An international arbitration tribunal in The Hague ordered former Yukos shareholders to legal action against the Russian government because it had allowed, despite binding to the International Energy Charter, the expropriation of the Group. As the claim will be circulated to the shareholders of 100 billion U.S. dollars.
“In the end, the European Court, but not 10,000 dollars compensation claim,” warns Alexei Makarkin of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies to realism in a new information war. But also includes Makarkin – such as Khodorkovsky’s supporters – not that Putin’s attacks against the detainee associated with the decision of the Court of Holland and the prime minister had once built a defensive line.
For just as likely, but observers think that is on the rise in the Russian government panic because the politicians are afraid because of the absurdity of the charge in the current second trial in Moscow for an acquittal.
Domestically, such a defeat would have to get over, however. The nation does not feel any great sympathy for Khodorkovsky. But at least one third of the population expressed according to the survey by the Institute Levada-Center at the beginning of the conviction, that people think Khodorkovsky could help with their know-how of the country in crisis. “If Khodorkovsky was set free, he would become perhaps less economically, but socially active,” says Sergei Guriev, rector of New Economic School in Moscow: “As a moral authority he could collect a lot of people around.”
An acquittal would have still another effect: When would this year have a pregnant Yukos lawyer suffering from AIDS and the former deputy leader of the group have been released from prison, the verdict further evidence of potential investors that the new president, Dmitry Medvedev, with the modernization seriously. “It would be a sign that the country does not drift to a halt,” says Guriev.
But that when it comes to power, the investment climate for the governance of secondary, Makarkin said: “Being a strong character Khodorkovsky is ready to fight. Putin has made clear with his recent statements that he did not want to see him in freedom.”
Twitter @RusEconFreedom