Mikhail Khodorkovsky has released a statement from jail on the new charges of embezzlement that he now faces. Essentially, Siberia’s most famous jailbird seems to have decided that he has nothing left to play with but his martyr card:
My task in the upcoming process is to demonstrate by my own example that current Russia is a country with custom-designed rule of law, where the law enforcement system, as well as the international cooperation of law enforcement agencies, are being used not only for the fight against criminality, but also in corrupt officials’ political and personal interests. […]
I am not scared by the new verdict. Does the number of years in jail I get under the false accusations make any difference at all? No decent person in the world would believe my pursuers (supporters of “the second term of Khodorkovsky”) anyway. Platon’s and my personal destiny is defined solely by our motherland’s destiny and its face after the power change in 2008.I do believe that the truth and fairness will prevail.
I wish I could be more optimistic.
Meanwhile, for some reasoned analysis of the latest twist in the Khodorkovsky saga, check out the Streetwise Professor’s ominously titled post - “Mr Khodorkovsky, Meet Mr Kafka”.
{ 1 comment }
La Russophobe 02.08.07 at 1:46 pm
Not only is the Kremlin not content with the original conviction and denying parole, it is not even content with the financial charges. It’s also in the process of trying to pin the blame for the Litvinenko killing on MK, claiming he did it to make the Kremlin look bad. Who knows, we may wake up tomorrow morning and find they are trying to blame him for Politkovskaya, too.
What’s really disturbing about all this isn’t even that Russia is brutalizing its citizens (again) or that they are standing idly by waiting ot be brutalized (again). It’s that the Kremlin is willing to take such brazen risks, even sending MK to Siberia, gambling that the West won’t take action. Even given our own cowardly failure to confront Russia, our ignorant failure to learn from the example of Hitler and Stalin, Russia is at bottom a very weak vulnerable state and you would not think a rational ruler would take actions that are bound to be so offensive and alienating abroad. Yet, they do so. They are either utterly incompetent or drunk on the fumes of oil and totally detached from the ability to perceive reality — just as in Soviet times.
We see the rise of a wealthy oligarch class just as in Tsarist times, with no appreciation of the instability this will breed. We see, in other words, Russians repeating the mistakes of the pre-Bolshevik period. At the same time, we see a neo-Soviet totalitarian regime sending people to Siberia on trumped-up charges — in other words, Russians simultaneously repeating the mistakes of the post-Bolshevik period.
Can you imagine the horrors that tomorrow will bring? I’m not sure I dare to try.
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