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A fearless, fascinating account of the emergence of the Putin regime also shines a light on the current threats posed by Russian money and influence
Russia stepped decisively off a path of western-led global integration on the morning of 25 October 2003. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the country’s richest man and the chief shareholder in its largest energy company, Yukos, had touched down to refuel his private jet in Novosibirsk when Russian Federal Security Service commandos forced their way on to the aircraft and arrested him on trumped up charges of fraud and tax evasion. Khodorkovsky was swiftly remanded in Moscow’s notorious Matrosskaya Tishina jail while the Kremlin put the finishing touches on a show trial that would see the oligarch sentenced to nine years in a Siberian prison.
Khodorkovsky was no saint: he had amassed a vast fortune during thechaotic and corrupt privatisations of the Yeltsin years while most ofthe country was reduced to poverty, and few mourned his downfall. But the unceremonious seizure and dismemberment of his business empire by a shadowy clique of men surrounding the president Vladimir Putin ushered in a disturbing new era in Russian politics. The Kremlin’s destruction of Yukos forms the central chapter in Catherine Belton’s fearless and fascinating account of the emergence of the Putin regime from the ashes of the Soviet Union. Continue reading...