Putin doesn't conduct elections in the Western sense of elections. This is more accurately probably described as a plebiscite, where people are supposed to express their support for him. The Russian system is not unique in this respect, but it is rather interesting. Here, in the West, the impression that people have is that Putin runs the whole country. This is not so, at all. To a certain extent, you could say that he runs the Kremlin, and this means that it's, in some situations, hard to tell whether it's him running the Kremlin, or the people around him running him.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyToday, a skilled manager makes more than the owner. And owners fight each other to get the skilled managers.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyPart of the people here are interested in the same thing that Putin is interested in: Putin wants to have America as an enemy. Part of Americans want to have Russia as an enemy. It's advantageous. The other part of the people are just ordinary people. And these people project onto big objects the kind of relations that they have with small objects in their everyday lives.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyNavalny is doing a very important thing in his segment of society. Gudkov is a doing a very important thing in his segment of society. Yabloko, or more accurately, some of the leaders of the Yabloko party, are doing a very important job in their segment of the population, people such as Schlosberg. And our organization Open Russia is also doing important work with its segment of society, because those people who are focused on us, our segment, they're not part of those other segments.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky