Russia ponders ‘watershed moment’ 10 years after Khodorkovsky arrest

Russia on Friday marked a decade since the arrest of billionaire oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose detention is seen as a turning point that has defined Vladimir Putin’s rule.

Respected Vedomosti daily called the arrest a “watershed moment in history” which “in many ways defined the country’s path of development.”

Khodorkovsky, now 50, was one of the richest people in the world when special forces troops detained him at a Siberian airport refueling stop in 2003.

He was convicted of tax evasion in 2005, then of embezzlement in a second trial in 2010, and is set to remain in prison until August 2014.

His oil company Yukos has been dismantled, its assets now mostly part of the state giant Rosneft.

Now serving out his term in a penal colony in northwestern Karelia region, Khodorkovsky has written scores of articles on Russia’s political and economic situation and has won comparisons with Nelson Mandela.

His arrest undermined Russia’s justice system, turning it into an “instrument for seeking bribes,” which then contributed to Russia’s colossal capital flight, Vedomosti said in an editorial.

Economist Yevgeny Yasin told RIA-Novosti news agency that Russia’s current economic slowdown “can be traced back to those events which occurred in 2003.”

The arrest marked the end of “peaceful coexistence between large Russian business and bureaucracy” and business activity dwindled as a result of the Yukos case, he said.

Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper frequently critical of the Kremlin, called the October 25 arrest of the Yukos owner the single event that “shaped Vladimir Putin’s regime.”

“As long as Khodorkovsky is a prisoner, the president is in control,” it said.

“It was with Khodorkovsky that prison became the universal method of solving unsolvable problems… a method of cutting out competition from politics, business, ideology, and an instrument of monopolisation of power.”

In an opinion article for the New York Times Friday, Khodorkovsky wrote that his prison life is “practically standing still” but that he continues to “live by the events taking place in Russia and the world.”

He blasted “state monopolism, corruption and inefficient administration, a consequence of the implacability of power and its excessive centralization in the hands of a single executive.”

The majority of Russians take little interest in Khodorkovsky’s case, a poll released this week confirmed.

Only 14 percent said they followed the case, and only nine percent said they had read his articles, according to a poll of Moscow residents conducted by Levada Centre in October.

Yet 32 percent said they believed Khodorkovsky’s release would depend on “a personal decision taken by Putin.”