Obama Cannot Possibly Avoid Raising the Khodorkovsky Case with Medvedev
Anders Aslund, a senior fellow of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, comments that right now, the prime example of Kremlin legal nihilism is the new trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. It looks like a conspiracy by the Vladimir Putin hard-liners against Medvedev that the trial is to begin March 31, two days before Medvedev's first meeting with US President Barack Obama in London. Obama cannot possibly avoid raising the Khodorkovsky case.
Medvedev has now been president for one year. After one year as Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev released Andrei Sakharov from his exile in Gorky, showing his commitment to greater freedom. Sakharov was the most famous political prisoner in the Soviet Union, exactly as Khodorkovsky is in Russia today.
In Russia, symbolic gestures matter more than laws. It is time for Medvedev to reveal what he actually stands for.