People take the lazy way out, and do not regard Putin and the Kremlin as the real enemy. They create a long but erroneous chain in their heads. Putin is the leader of Russia. Putin does X, therefore Russia is doing X, and Russia is our enemy. And so, we introduce sanctions, for example, against Russia.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyFortunes are made, and disappear, over the lifetime of a single generation. Today, a person in essence takes his wealth from society just for the duration of his or her lifetime. The next generation has to create it anew.
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 KhodorkovskyWhat's important to me now is to uphold my good name and achieve a fair court decision - the past cannot be recovered anyway.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyLarge companies cannot finance political parties as their shareholders and employees have different political views.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyThere are people who are at fault for one or another problem. These people are very avaricious and self-serving. They're not doing it just to do it; they're doing it for the money. That money, they keep here. When you say, "We're going to find these people, these guilty people, the ones who are not only breaking laws but are also hurting their own fellow country people," and you say, "We're going to punish them, specifically, that's a step in the right direction."
Mikhail KhodorkovskyI am working in my office. I've got a boss who tells me what to do. He's got a boss who tells him what to do. And above him is another boss who probably is telling my boss in the same way - or my boss' boss in the same way what to do. In actuality, this is not the way things work. Management science says that that kind of a chain doesn't work more than three levels up.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky