World from Berlin: Clemency 'A Master Stroke of Secret Diplomacy'

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/german-press-review-on-putin-and-politics-of-khodorkovsky-release-a-940661.html



By releasing Mikhail Khodorkovsky from prison, Russian President Vladimir Putin has eliminated a political burden that has dogged relations between Moscow and the West for years. German editorialists say it is a highly symbolic move ahead of the Olympics.

World from Berlin: Clemency 'A Master Stroke of Secret Diplomacy'
December 23, 2013 – 01:38 PM

With his arrival in the German capital on Friday, former oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was granted clemency by Russian President Vladimir Putin and released from prison in a dramatic turn of events, has become one of the biggest political stories of the year in Berlin.

Dozens of reporters from around the world turned out on Sunday for the first press conference to be given by the newly free man. Khodorkovsky spent a decade in prison after being convicted in two politically driven trials that created tremendous international pressure for Putin, who has been accused by governments from Washington to Berlin of violating human rights.

There was much about the events of the past weekend that evoked the Cold War -- from the mere fact that a Russian political prisoner had traveled to Berlin, to the even more explicit symbolism of him giving apress conference at the site that was once the main crossing between East and West Germany. Former German foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who worked for the past two-and-a-half years to secure Khodorkovsky's release, is also a political veteran of that era.

In Berlin, the former oligarch said he has no immediate plans to return to Russia, that he will not fight to regain his shares in the oil firm Yukos, which the government stripped from him, and that he will not become politically active.