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KIROVSK, Murmanskaya Oblast - The 30,000 inhabitants of this Arctic town in the middle of the vast Kola Peninsula pride themselves on being happy and hospitable. There are reasons for this: For an industrial town, the multicolored buildings look refreshingly pristine and the view is panoramic, especially this time of year, when the sun always hangs in the sky, except for an occasional dip behind the barren and breathtaking Khibiny mountains. But life hasn't always been so idyllic. Like hundreds of other outcroppings in Stalin's gulag system, Kirovsk was designed as a labor camp of death and detainment. It is...

Former vice-president of the Russian concern YUKOS Mikhail Rogachev has been found dead in Moscow . This was reported by the Russian propaganda Telegram channel Mash “One of the top YUKOS executives, Mikhail Rogachev, fell out of a window and died in the center of Moscow. He had previously committed suicide,” the report says. It is noted that Rogachev was 64 years old. According to Mash, he had a severe form of oncology. “He left a suicide note and committed suicide in the morning on Protopopovsky Lane,” the Telegram channel reported.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky was once the richest man in Russia until he challenged Vladimir Putin and was sent to jail for 10 years. Now, he has advice for Western leaders trying to deal with his former adversary, telling CBC’s Terence McKenna that a show of strength is key.

The proposed sale by Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch, of his estim-ated $10bn (£5.5bn) stake in the Sibneft oil company to Gazprom, the state-controlled gas group, looks like a neat way of settling accounts with his country. He sails off into the sunset, free to buy yachts and football clubs, while the Kremlin virtually completes the renationalisation of Russia's core energy assets. Smiles all around, not least among the bankers involved. The truth is far less pleasant, for Russia and for Mr Abramovich. This deal, if it goes ahead, will be the latest development in the untransparent privatisation of Russia's...

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...