The Trial of K
Once again, Russia's business and political forces have clashed mightily. Which side will win?
IN THE fog swirling round Russian politics this week, one thing at least looks clearer. The prosecutors' campaign against Yukos, Russia's biggest oil company, which began on July 2nd with the arrest of a big shareholder and culminated on October 25th with the arrest of its boss, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has President Vladimir Putin's approval. Only he, most think, could have given the go-ahead to throw the country's richest man in jail. Mr Putin feigned detachment from the legal probes, as he did three years ago when two other oligarchs, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, were stripped of their assets and chased into exile; but nobody doubts that their fate, like Mr Khodorkovsky's, was Mr Putin's punishment for political meddling.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “The Trial of K”
From the November 1st 2003 edition
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