Mikhail Khodorkovsky Will Soon Be a Free Man

Regardless of the motives behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's action, the world can feel a little more free today. Jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky will be pardoned, as President Putin announced Thursday in a surprise decision that will let his number one foe and Russia's once richest man out of prison after more than a decade. Putin also pardoned the two jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band and the 30-member crew of a Greenpeace protest ship. The move seems designed to calm international criticism of Russia's human rights record leading into February's Winter Olympics in Sochi. Putin chose not to make the announcement during his marathon four-hour annual press conference. Instead, he waited until just afterward, dropping the biggest news after journalists had already bombarded him with questions, including one about Khodorkovsky. Putin said Khodorkovsky, who was set to be released next August, had submitted an appeal for pardon, something he had refused to do before because asking for a pardon is tantamount to admitting guilt, which Khodorkovsky has never done. "He has spent ten years behind bars. It's a tough punishment," Putin said. "He's citing humanitarian aspects - his mother is ill. A decree to pardon him will be signed shortly." The jailed head of the Free Russia party said he expects to celebrate Christmas at home with his family. Khodorkovsky's son, Pavel, tweeted : "Very happy news. Waiting to speak with my father to learn more." Putin's announcement "came as a big surprise for me, totally out of the blue," Khodorkovsky's mother told RT television. During Putin's first term as president, Khodorkovsky angered the Kremlin by funding opposition political candidates and parties. His actions defied an unwritten agreement between Putin and a narrow circle of billionaire tycoons, called the "oligarchs," under which the government ignored the details of questionable privatization deals that made the oligarchs enormously rich in the years after the Soviet collapse, on condition that they didn't meddle in politics. After Khodorkovsky broke the pact, masked commandos stormed into Khodorkovsky's jet on the tarmac of a Siberian airport on October 2003 and arrested him at gunpoint. He was convicted of tax evasion in 2005 and of embezzlement in a second case in 2010. During Putin's first term as president, the tycoon also was believed to harbor personal political ambitions. In the past, when asked if he could pardon Khodorkovsky, Putin always answered that the inmate needs to plea for the pardon. Khodorkovsky's lawyers, however, have insisted that Russian law doesn't require a convict to do so. And the pardon does not seem to extend to Khodorkovsky's business partner, Platon Lebedev, who was convicted and sentenced in the same trials. Putin on Thursday didn't say a word about the fate of Lebedev. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Lebedev didn't asked for pardon. During the press conference, when Putin was asked whether Khodorkovsky could face yet another criminal case that would keep him in prison longer, he gave a vague answer, saying he doesn't see grounds for that but that prosecutors must investigate alleged offenses. At the time of his arrest, Khodorkovsky was estmated to be worth $15 billion, but it's not clear what is left of it. Khodorkovsky's oil company, Yukos, once Russia's biggest, was dismantled after his arrest, with its most lucrative assets ending up in the hands of the state-owned company Rosneft. Russia's deputy minister of economic development, Andrei Klepach, voiced hope that Khodorkovsky's release would help improve Russia's image among investors. ~~~~~ Dear readers, two things seem clear : (1) Vladimir Putin does not want his Sochi Winter Olympics marred by protests over the imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and (2) foreign investors were spooked by the "show trial" treatment of Khodorkovsky and it led to the reduction of much-needed foreign investment in Russia. Putin's pardon of Khodorkovsky is seen as a way to solve both problems with one stroke. Will Khodorkovsky now stay out of politics? No one knows, but we do know that Khodorkovsky has probably realized that he has no power while in prison. He did not fill out an official form requesting a pardon. He wrote a letter to Putin asking to be pardoned, apparently based on wanting to be with his mother, who is in poor health. The important thing is that a person who never should have been sent to prison in the first place is soon going to be a free man.