The former Yukos head, imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, yesterday positioned himself as its leading political dissident
The former Yukos head, imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, yesterday positioned himself as its leading political dissident, blaming his wealth for his unenviable fate.
In his letter he wrote, "I have realized that wealth on its own, especially vast wealth, in no way makes a person free," he wrote in the Vedomosti newspaper. "I had to close my eyes to a lot of things, and make my peace with a lot, for the sake of my wealth, to keep it and grow it. I didn't just run my property, it ran me."
The letter goes against the grain of previous missives, which were conciliatory to the Russian president. In it, he openly criticises the Kremlin for dismantling a large of part of the Yukos oil empire and allowing the state to buy it up at a reduced price.
Mr Khodorkovsky writes: "The question is what lessons the country will take from the Yukos affair, whose finale is the most destructive event for the economy in all of President Vladimir Putin's time in power."
He attacks the renewed nationalism that fuels much of the Kremlin's increase of state power. "No true patriot would give his life for a bunch of bureaucrats who are only interested in feathering their own nests," he says in an epistle entitled Property and Freedom.
