Khodorkovsky & Lebedev Communications Center

Writing in Transitions Online, Galina Stolyarova, a journalist with The St. Petersburg Times, comments that the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is "absurd."

She said: "I agreed with every word in the appeal." However, she questions what the petitioners who signed the letter to President Dmitry Medvedev in support of Khodorkovsky are hoping to achieve.

Stolyarova explained: "The petition is one of many on the subject, and there has been no sign of movement on the situation...To see human rights advocates indulge in sending repeated letters - which are never answered - on topics about which the rulers hold a very different view, makes it seem that civil society in Russia has been completely neutered."