Another thing...

which I'm still trying to get my head around, and I think everyone else is too: why did all this begin at all? I mean, this need not have happened - politics and business need not have crossed swords but by wilful complicity someone made the decision to go head to head with Putin... why?? Just doesn't make any sense at all, not from the theories that are currently being peddled as fact anyway.

It is unusual for business to enter the sphere of political conflict in quite the head-on fashion it has done here. This simply wouldn't have happened in the West.

Saying that, it would not have had to happen in the West as there are various methods to procure political change at the governmental level which is simply non-existent in Russia. The ideals of authoritarian 'managed democracies' will always be inconsistent with the needs of big business which is striving for multinational status the way Yukos was. Once a company is multinational it no longer falls under the sway of the autocrat...
Big business was actually the only power in Russia big enough to provide a check to the government's regime, the only institution big enough to be independent and to raise the stakes. When authorities are trying to restore monopoly power, expanding control to all areas of public life only big business is powerful enough to provide opposition.

This is actually why the impending cases are very important in Russian politics and history right now, whether ordinary people are aware of what lies in the balance or not...

The outcome of this case determines whether any institution is strong enough to check the wishes of the Kremlin. If so, democracy in some form may develop. If not, then Russia has missed its chance and slides back into the mud of authoritarianism-by-the-backdoor.

So. This still begs the question - what created the conflict - what started the ball-rolling? What changed a man notorious in Western circles (MBK) for subservience to the party-line, never rocking the political boat, and humility towards those in authority into one who was willing not only to go head-to-head with Putin but risk imprisonment as well?

IMHO the answer is very simple: it all started with export routes.

In January 2003 Russia's powerful oil barons locked horns with the government in a high-stakes battle over new export routes that threatened to alter the economic and political landscape of the country. The government did not show any willingness to relinquish control over the country's export routes even though MBK offered to pay for new pipelines to be built himself.

On February 17th same year Putin had this to say:

"Gazprom, as a strategically important company, should be kept, and has been kept, as a single organism,".

Then it moved into a row over corruption in the Kremlin. MBK is quoted by AP as saying:
"You can say that it all started with us. Well, it started at some point and now it must be ended. The situation has come to a head."
He also requested that Putin be willing to get rid of some 'odious' figures in the government to show he was willing to combat corruption.

In March 28th 2003 at a packed Moscow conference Thursday, Khodorkovsky and Nemtsov joined forces to lash out at the government for slowing down on rooting out corruption through administrative reform and failing to do enough to support small and medium businesses, which, they warned, could lead to growing unemployment and social unrest.

And, at the same time, they called for a decision to be made on pipeline construction as a key way of pulling the economy out of stagnation. Round about the same time speculation began to be floated that Khodorkovsky may himself run for elections in 2008, when Putin was forced by the Constitution to step down after two terms. Khodorkovsky had made no secret of the fact that he intended to retire from business when he was 45, which would be 2008.

In June that year a scandal erupted when a report published by the Council for National Strategy attacked the oligarchs, Yukos and MBK in particular, stating that,

"According to the plans of a key member of the ruling class, as early as 2004 a new government may be formed under the control of and accountable to the parliament. The front-runner to be prime minister of such a government, formed under a new constitution, is considered to be Mikhail Khodorkovsky."

Days later Putin began to speak out against oligarchs. When asked by a journalist from Vladivostok about possible routes for a new oil pipeline to the east to tap Asian markets, Putin said he was leaning toward the route from Angarsk to the Far East port of Nakhodka over a rival route backed by Yukos that would go directly to northern China.

July 3rd Platon Lebedev was arrested. Everything else, as they say, is history. Warning shots were fired over Yukos' bows but instead of capitulating the war was on.

The start of it was undoubtedly, IMHO, the struggle over export routes. Yukos' economic interests clashed with the Kremlin's power interests. Yukos was lobbying to privatize the oil monopoly. In a sense, it was attempting to disarm the Kremlin and it was gathering all the might of international capital and political clout on its side as export routes promised to open up to China and America.

From this struggle it became apparant that to get what he wanted MBK would have to launch a campaign against the Kremlin, accusing it of corruption, and to push for a power-structure change which would be better for big business. And it became apparent that had he won the Kremlin would have lost its one last lever of power over the oil magnates as well as its control over the pipeline money.

Just my two-cents. I'm no analyst.

But from what started out as a power-struggle we have ended up with a messianic movement, a martyr to the cause. Now, my next question is:
Why didn't MBK flee or apologise when he had the chance? Does he really believe all this anti-authoritarianism rhetoric or is this simply a convenient guise for lobbying for big business; is he stubborn; is he deluded. In short - is he a real hero to the democracy cause or a fake wannabe pushed into the role by circumstances beyond his control? .....