Kremlin About-Face: What's Behind the Khodorkovsky Pardon?

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/why-putin-freed-kremlin-opponent-and-oligarch-khodorkovsky-a-940336.html



Russian President Vladimir Putin has pardoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, citing "humanitarian principles." Now the former oil magnate has headed to Germany, and observers are left to debate the reasons for Putin's decision.

Kremlin About-Face: What's Behind the Khodorkovsky Pardon?
By Christian Neef and Matthias Schepp
December 20, 2013 – 02:27 PM

A few weeks ago, Maxim Dbar, the spokesman for jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was sitting in a Moscow café and talking about the former oil tycoon's current situation. Dbar said it boiled down to the old struggle between the hardliners surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin and the relatively liberal politicians in Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's camp.

For months now, Russian judicial authorities have been preparing a third trial against the former magnate. The public prosecutor has also targeted German law professor Otto Luchterhandt, who has criticized the verdicts handed down against Khodorkovsky.

Then Dbar lowered his voice: "We have a glint of hope again." And he dropped another hint: "Ten years behind bars of course take their toll, even on a man with Khodorkovsky's enormous willpower and energy." It's very possible that Khodorkovsky's lawyers and closest aides already realized back then that he was about to abandon his long-standing policy of not seeking a pardon.

On Friday morning, Mikhail Khodorkovsky walked out of a prison camp in northern Russia a free man for the first time in a decade. Putin signed a decree pardoning him on the basis of "humanitarian principles," officially releasing the staunch Kremlin critic and former oil magnate who was once Russia's richest man. Hours later, Russian prison authorities reported he was being flown to Germany.

[bemildred]

1. Putin so rarely gets to be the good guy, I think he likes it.

But also, he sits secure, so he can afford to be generous.

It's the USA that is being criticized for its human rights failings today, not Russia. "You become what you hate", as I like to say. We hated the USSR, and then we imitated them, out of fear.