Putin regards me as the most dangerous person, and when they were releasing me from jail, the only condition was that I leave the country. And when they did push me out of the country, to make sure that I wouldn't come back, they opened up a criminal case against me - a new one.
Mikhail KhodorkovskyIf we talk about changes of power in Russia, that has occurred several times in the past century. After Stalin came Khrushchev, who implemented his legacy quite radically, one could say. But there was no blood, nonetheless. After Brezhnev came Gorbachev. I'm not talking about the ones who were in power for only a short period of time. Gorbachev, too, left a very radical legacy.
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 KhodorkovskyIt's a very erroneous strategy to try to push the Russian opposition to unite. First of all, the opposition is addressing different parts of Russian society that have differing points of view. And besides, a united opposition is a nice big target that the authorities have a much easier time fighting. And besides, resisting an authoritarian regime with an authoritarian opposition merely means that, in the event of victory, you're just doing yet another round of the same old, same old.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky