Gevorkian: Verdict of Khodorkovsky-Lebedev Case Depends on How the Political Cards Fall
In a commentary for Gazeta, Natalia Gevorkian, discusses the show trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev - one year one from its inception.
Gevorkian comments: "There are things that never cease to amaze me relative to this trial. Besides the absurd charge of stealing all the oil produced." She questions why the trial is open, and how long it continue to be dragged out for. She speculates the impact of the 2010 Presidential elections on Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, nothing that they are Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's political prisoners, not President Dmitry Medvedev's.
Gevorkian adds: "I am getting the impression that the principal power players interested in the trial are in a state of blissful delusion that people couldn't care less about Khodorkovsky with Lebedev, and likewise about this trial." But notes that "people are attending the trial, normal citizens of the country, famous and not-famous. They see everything and they hear everything."
Gevorkian notes that for a year now, "Khodorkovsky and Lebedev in open court have been demonstrating their intellectual and moral superiority over the state, which in Russia, as is considered, can destroy anybody and everybody. For the seventh year in isolation they are proving no, not everybody."
She concludes that the duration of the trial and the verdict in this case directly depend on how the political cards fall.