Russia watchers have been pondering for months: Will Putin run
for president again in 2012, or won’t he? The verdict in the case
of Mikhail Khodorkovsky last week should settle it. Putin will
run.
In November 2003, federal agents seized Khodorkovsky in
Siberia as he was about to board an airplane. At the time, he was
chairman of Yukos Oil, the nation’s largest oil company. It and he
were prosperous. Its shares were publicly traded and he managed it
according to Western trading and accounting standards.
In the early nineties the government of then-President
Boris Yeltsin was selling off many government assets. Khodorkovsky
was one of a number of young entrepreneurs who obtained such assets
at bargain prices. In this case it was a small oil company. He and
others who made such deals were labeled “oligarchs.” When Putin was
elected he made it clear he did not like the oligarchs and warned
them to stay away from politics. Khodorkovsky did not take the
warning as literally as he should, as it turned out. He gave
monetary support to political groups that wanted more democracy for
Russia. Putin decided to make him an object
lesson.
Khodorkovsky, after his arrest, was charged with tax
fraud. In 2005 he was tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. His
sentence was scheduled to run out in 2011, not long before the next
presidential election. With him free, Putin probably envisioned
Khodorkovsky encouraging the forces of democracy to challenge his
campaign. The simplest thing to do was to bring fresh charges,
which is what Putin arranged to do. This time it was charged that
Khodorkovsky and his partner, Platon L. Lebedev, had embezzled $27
billion from their company using accounting schemes that eluded the
company’s auditors.
The charges were a fabrication. Putin used the case to
show Russia that he is firmly in charge. This makes a mockery of
the apparently sincere statements by current President Dmitri
Medvedev calling for government transparency, an independent
judiciary, and the rule of law.
Predictably, in a judicial system rife with corruption,
the judge in the current case handed down a sentence that will keep
Khodorkovsky and Lebedev behind bars until 2017. During the first
trial Putin’s popularity remained high — around 80 percent —
because many Russians saw the oligarchs as unjustly rich and the
trial served as a rebuke to all of them.
Putin apparently thinks little has changed, but it has.
Pro-democracy activists demonstrate more often and in greater
numbers than before and the middle class in large cities continues
to grow. Gennady Gudkov recently told the Financial Times
that today, “People have begun to feel sorry for Khodorkovsky. It
is exactly the opposite of what they felt 10 years ago.”
Criticism of the verdict by governments and news media
outside of Russia was dismissed by the Foreign Ministry as
“interference” in a domestic issue. Typical of Putin’s style, the
critics were invited to mind their own business.
Putin may be able to easily push Medvedev aside and stack
the political deck to ensure his 2012 election as president, but
the trends are now beginning to move against his the-state-as-bully
philosophy and method of operation.
Mr. Hannaford is a member of the Committee on the
Present Danger.
