Khodorkovsky: "Russia's Democratic Future Lies with Britain"
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, commenting in an opinion editorial in the UK's Guardian, discusses British-Russian relations.
He urges the UK's coalition to set out "principled conditions" for its engagement with Russia that should hold Russian leaders to their declarations on democratic values, human rights, the independence of the judiciary and the fight against corruption.
He also states his desire for Britain to see Russia's citizens as capable and talented who are "searching for their way out of the darkness of totalitarianism into the light of freedom."
Khodorkovsky concludes by hoping UK Prime Minister David Cameron supports "everyone who has suffered from corruption and arbitrariness, and will offer Russians not only mutually beneficial economic co-operation, but an interaction based on clear, transparent standards in the realm of politics, civil liberties and human rights."
Commenting on Khodorkovsky's article, The Daily Telegraph reminded that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, makes his first official visit to Russia as Foreign Secretary next month. There have been signals from both sides that the UK and Russia are ready to patch up a relationship derailed by the murder in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of the Kremlin, in London. Butt the publication notes that Khodorkovsky, who is regarded as a political prisoner by many in the West, urged caution. "Britain should not allow itself to forget that Russia remains an authoritarian state with an extremely high level of corruption," he wrote in The Observer.
The Observer comments that Khodorkovsky's fate reveals a lot about the direction Russia has taken in the decade since Vladimir Putin took power. The publication believes that the thrust of his argument is sound: the Kremlin exercises power capriciously and without regard for the rule of law; at the domestic level, that makes for individual tales of injustice.