>From: John Mage <jmage at panix.com>
>
>i'd much like to see it.
Well, you are referring to a letter that was supposed to me sent to my boss, not to the list, but the item in question should be up at www.russiareport.ru in a day or two. It's basically buckets of links to articles on the Yukos scandal going back to Lebedev's arrest, along with commentary.
They way I take the event (Peter Lavelle has a much more worked-out view of this than I do) is a combination of a few factors:
1. The FSB is trying to muscle in on Yukos in order to get a piece of the pie. 2. The FSB is trying to muscle the oligachs into a) putting more money into the country and b) posisbly more importantly, putting more money into the FSB. 3. Putin and the oligarchs came to a gentlemen's agreement in 2000 that they wouldn't get to close to politics, and that in return Putin would not touch their wealth. The rumor is that Khodorkovsky's open political aspirations (including rumors of a possible presidential run in 2008) broke the agreement, and that the Kremlin is trying to teach him and the rest of the oligarchs a lesson about staying in your place.
This coincides with Gusinsky's arrest in Greece and corruption investigations at Alrosa, Russia's diamond monopoly.
There was even talk a while ago about "revisiting the results of privation," which means redivvying up or renationalizing some of the property criminally privatized in the 90s.
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