AEI Director of Russian Studies Leon Aron is available to comment on the trial verdict--announced on December 27--of former Yukos oil boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

On December 27, 2010, businessmen and entrepreneurs Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev received the maximum sentence, fourteen years, on patently fabricated charges. What is the impact of the sentencing on the Russian economy and foreign investments? How will the democratic opposition proceed in this political climate? And how should US policymakers deal with this new reality?

There is a Russian saying, lyod tronulsya, which means the winter ice on the river has cracked and begun to move, that things have begun to change deeply and significantly. This is what's happening in today's Russia.

The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky--former CEO of the YUKOS oil company and Russia’s richest man--begins this month in Moscow. Part of a broader, yearlong judicial assault by the Russian government on YUKOS, Russia’s largest oil exporter, the Khodorkovsky case is certain to have repercussions far beyond the courtroom--foremost in its...

On October 25, Mikhail Khodorkovsky--CEO of YUKOS, the largest private company in Russia--was arrested at gunpoint by masked agents of the Russian government on what are widely viewed as politically-motivated charges of tax evasion, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. President Putin has publicly voiced his support for the assault on Khodorkovsky,...

Panelists at a November 3 AEI event discussed Russia's political and economic future in light of the arrest of YUKOS CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In response to Russia's economic woes, the Kremlin is attempting to create a kind of free entrepreneurial zone, but the current Russian political climate does not allow for a commitment to innovation.

Khodorkovsky's fate is almost certainly being decided not in Judge Danilkin's chambers, but in the Kremlin by two people: Vladimir Putin and his protégé, the haltingly liberal president, Dmitri Medvedev.