Word: kremlins
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...move West. While the flamboyant Khodorkovsky was protesting the state's growing authoritarianism, high-handedness and corruption, and lavishly funding opposition parties - leading many to suspect he had presidential ambitions - the taciturn Abramovich took a quieter approach. Known as a gray eminence and "the purse" of the Yeltsin Kremlin, Abramovich threw his weight behind the new regime, buying into major businesses. More recently, Abramovich has started ditching assets. Since last spring, Abramovich has sold his stake in oil giant Sibneft to Yukos for $3 billion (while taking a 26% stake in the new company), half of his 50% stake...
...should be prosecuted fairly and uniformly. Just because Khodorkovsky controlled a large portion of the Russian oil industry is no reason to grant him carte blanche to defy the law. But the timing of the industrialist’s arrest—he has been more critical of the Kremlin of late and appeared to be considering a presidential run—and Putin’s demonstrated penchant for strong-arm politics make it impossible to believe that Khodorkovsky is sitting behind bars right now because of tax evasion. Indeed, if anything, Khodorkovsky has done more to promote responsibility...
...Kremlin persecution of Russia’s powerful oligarchs has become routine: An obscenely rich Russian criticizes the president, often on his own TV station; Putin sends ski-masked officers from the Federal Security Service—the successor organization to the KGB—to confiscate assets and arrest the upstart; and the oligarch either escapes abroad—usually to London—or languishes in prison until he accedes to the president’s demands. Khodorkovsky hasn’t gotten past the languishing-in-prison stage, and, unlike his predecessors, it looks as though...
Putin’s latest power grab also throws Russia even farther off the path toward liberal democracy. Though the government threw up a shoddy facade of legality, every time the Kremlin goes after a political enemy for tax evasion, it chips away at the impartial rule of law. If the president wants to purge Russian industry of those who took advantage of privatization, he should go after all of the profiteers. But Putin would never do that—it would upset too many investors, foreign and domestic. Instead, he just waits until the oligarchs start to speak...
...Ukranian-born Sharansky, a prominent dissident in the Soviet Union who was jailed by the Kremlin from 1977 to 1986, said that human rights activists—who once made the effort to free him from prison an international cause-celebre—have since abandoned the plight of the Jews...