Free Republic

Most of the world is focused on the war in Ukraine, which has created political unrest in most western countries. Although it feels as though Russia is under a microscope, there is a lot of Russian politics that the media has not discussed. One of these things is that there are rivals to Putin, one of whom is Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Munich Security Conference took place two weeks ago. Although Russian officials are usually invited, this year that changed. Due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, organizers decided to invite Russian politicians pushing to replace Putin. Those guests included multiple Russian...

TEL AVIV - Russian-Israeli oligarch Leonid Nevzlin announced on Tuesday that he planned to give up his Russian passport in protest of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Everything that Putin touches dies," Nevzlin wrote in a Facebook post. "I am against the war. I am against the occupation. I am against the genocide of the Ukrainian people." Nevzlin was among the first prominent Russian oligarchs to establish self-imposed exile in Israel, fleeing what he has described as a campaign of politically-motivated persecution by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In 2003, Nevzlin fled Russia for Israel amid a Kremlin-backed investigation into his Yukos...

Investigative journalist Michael Isikoff said Friday that he was surprised to find out that an article he wrote about Carter Page prior to the election was used to obtain a spy warrant against the former Trump campaign adviser.The revelation, which was made in a memo released by the House Intelligence Committee on Friday, “stuns me,” Isikoff said in an episode of his podcast, “Skullduggery.”The four-page memo alleges that the DOJ and FBI submitted inaccurate and incomplete information in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant against Page. The spy warrant was granted on Oct. 21, 2016.One “essential” part of the...

The Kremlin-Yukos conflict, almost a month old now, has shaken the conventional wisdom many had come to accept about the Vladimir Putin presidency. In a nutshell, the standard interpretation before this happened was the following: Putin's 2000 agreement with the oligarchs called for strengthening the state without big business getting overly involved in politics. In turn, the state would not meddle too much in the affairs of the business empires - basically, in the Russian economy. Of course, there are many nuances, but, essentially, the Yukos fracas has put this 'social contract,' as it were, into question. Eventually, most likely...

Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has warned that President Vladimir Putin's current policies threaten to trigger a repeat of Russia's 1917 revolution. In an interview with Bloomberg, the former Yukos CEO described Putin as an authoritarian leader "forced to burn the field" all around himself in order to retain power. "All authoritarian regimes, especially ones like this that aren't based on an ideology but on an individual person, are highly unstable," Khodorkovsky, 51, was cited as saying. Citing dismal economic conditions exacerbated by Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine, Khodorkovsky told Bloomberg the country was on...

The man who spent 10 years in prison for crossing Putin says the Russian regime will fall, one way or the other, and those who want a democracy to replace it need to get organized now. In December 2013, when Vladimir Putin released Mikhail Khodorkovsky from prison after 10 years, the former oil tycoon and political prisoner said he would not enter politics.... “When I left prison, I announced that I am not interested in engaging in politics. I never promised anyone I wouldn’t engage in it and I continue to be not interested in engaging in it,” Khodorkovsky told...

I can recall October 2003. My last day as a free man. Several weeks after my arrest, I was informed that president Putin had decided: I was going to have to “slurp gruel” for 8 years. It was hard to believe that back then. Seven years have gone by already since that day. Seven years – quite a long stretch of time, and all the more so – when you’ve spent it in jail. All of us have had time to reassess and rethink many things. Judging by the prosecutors’ presentation: “give them 14 years” and “spit on previous court...

BERLIN, Germany (UPI) -- Russia has cut oil supplies to Germany by as much as one-third in recent weeks, worrying energy security experts the move is part of an overall energy strategy change in Moscow. The drop in Russian oil deliveries was first reported in Friday`s Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. The Munich-based newspaper quoted an official from a German refinery who said oil deliveries via the Druzhba oil pipeline network dropped significantly. The refinery, based in Schwedt, near the Polish border, was able to operate on full capacity, but only by relying on domestic and North Sea oil. Owned by BP,...

Last updated: August 24 2007 18:58 Russia has made significant cuts to oil supplies sent to German refineries recently, rekindling concerns in Germany over the reliability of Russian energy supplies. Lukoil, Russia’s second largest oil producer, on Friday acknowledged that supplies to Germany had been reduced by about one-third in July and August but refused to explain why the reduction had occurred. Analysts said Lukoil’s decision not to provide previously contracted quantities of oil could be aimed at extracting higher prices from German refineries or be part of Lukoil’s efforts to acquire stakes in German and European refineries. Germany’s economics...

Mikhail S. Gutseriev, who was once in the tight coterie of Russian billionaires known as oligarchs but has since fallen from favor, accused the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of forcing him out of the company using trumped-up tax claims. The critical letter was the first significant public challenge to Mr. Putin from an influential businessman since the imprisonment four years ago of Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the former chairman of Yukos Oil, who is serving an eight-year sentence in Siberia. The development left analysts wondering what the future holds now for Mr. Gutseriev.

MOSCOW (AP) -- U.S. oil company Chevron Corp. has expressed interest in acquiring assets of oil giant OAO Yukos, a Russian bankruptcy official said Friday. Nikolai Lashkevich, a spokesman for Yukos bankruptcy supervisor Eduard Rebgun, told The Associated Press that several international companies had inquired about participating in any auction or selloff of the assets of Yukos, once Russia's largest oil producer. "The receiver's office has received letters expressing interest in acquiring certain Yukos assets from a number of large international companies, including from the U.S. company Chevron," Lashkevich told AP.

Today US State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack issued the following comments in response to the new charges applied to Mikhail Khodorkovsky: QUESTION: Do you have any comment on Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the charges that were brought against him today? MR. MCCORMACK: As a matter of fact, I do have something right here. I have something prepared on this. Let me read it to you. As we have commented in connection with the original trial, the continued prosecution of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the dismantlement of Yukos raise serious questions about the rule of law in Russia. Khodorkovsky and his associate, Platon...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An acquaintance of a former Russian agent killed by radiation poisoning in London said in a television interview that Alexander Litvinenko, who accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder, had planned to blackmail a wealthy Russian businessman. Russian Julia Svetlichnaya said she was a graduate student in London when she spoke to Litvinenko -- a former Russian state security officer who died on November 23 in London after ingesting polonium 210 -- about a book she was writing. "He told me ... he's doing a project for blackmailing one of the Russian oligarchs (exiled...

Jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky is looking at a possible 15-year prison term in connection with a money-laundering inquiry. The prison term would come on top of the eight years he is already serving. Prosecutors on Wednesday questioned Khodorkovsky as part of their inquiry. "Khodorkovsky is suspected of stealing oil revenues from Yukos subsidiary firms and then laundering these funds by donating them to Open Russia," Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Yury Shmidt, said by telephone from the regional capital, Chita.

MOSCOW, Dec 27 (Reuters) - Russian prosecutors said on Wednesday that Leonid Nevzlin, a former top manager of the YUKOS business empire, could have ordered the poisoning of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko. "A version is being looked at that those who ordered these crimes could be the same people who are on an international wanted list for serious and very serious crimes, one of whom is ... Leonid Nevzlin," Russia's prosecutor-general's office said in a statement posted on its Web site www.genproc.gov.ru. [...] A trusted business partner of jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Nevzlin has provoked the Kremlin's...

MADRID, November 25 (RIA Novosti) - Spain's National Court has issued a warrant to arrest a Russian attorney detained in a major ongoing crackdown on Georgian and Russian organized crime groups in the country, his lawyer said Friday. Spanish police detained nine people Wednesday night, including Alexander Gofshtein, a lawyer for the bankrupt oil firm Yukos who arrived from Moscow for a meeting in the Soto del Real jail near Madrid with his client, Zakhar Kalashov, who is believed to be a Georgian mafia boss. "No charge has yet been brought against him. Alexander is suspected of involvement in a...

Putin’s superpower play By : Richard Orange & James Forsyth26/10/2006Russia has a new weapon with which to bully the West: its vast energy reserves. As the world’s biggest supplier of oil and gas, the Kremlin is determined that industrial muscle will succeed where Marxism failed When a 32-year-old KGB agent called Vladimir Putin was invited to attend the Red Banner Institute in Moscow, one of the Soviet Union’s elite spy colleges, he couldn’t believe his luck. It was 1984 and the young but deeply ambitious Putin was soon being groomed as a specialist in economic and technological espionage. His...

The "Yukos Affair", its Motives and Implications Key points 1. When interpreting the "Yukos affair", it is hard to focus on any single particular motive or explanation that would easily rationalise the government's actions against the company. The "Yukos affair" is a multi-layered process with a number of different reasons for its cause. When one scrutinises the events around the company, the impression may be obtained that the Kremlin seemed at first not to have had any ultimate strategy; the authorities' position evolved as time went by. At first, the conflict was mainly of a political nature; economic factors did...

The Moscow City Court is due to hear the verdict Thursday in the politically charged trial of former Yukos security chief Alexei Pichugin, who stands accused of a series of contract killings, including the 1998 murder of Nefteyugansk mayor Vladimir Petukhov. The case is a key part of the state's efforts to link former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky's chief lieutenant, Leonid Nevzlin, to the killings. State prosecutor Kamil Kashayev has asked the court to hand down a life sentence for Pichugin, who is already serving 20 years in jail after being convicted last year of organizing the double murder of...

Slovakia says to buy pipeline stake from YUKOS 2006-08-09 19:19 By Peter Laca BRATISLAVA, Aug 9 (Reuters) - The Slovak government reached a deal with bankrupt Russian oil firm YUKOS on Wednesday to buy back a 49 percent stake in Slovak oil pipeline operator Transpetrol. Economy Minister Lubomir Jahnatek said after negotiations with officials of YUKOS Finance, which formally owns the Transpetrol shares, that the deal was still subject to approval by a U.S. judge overseeing part of YUKOS bankruptcy proceedings. "We need a ruling by a U.S. bankruptcy judge for finalising the matter, and for signing the necessary documentation,"...