Tsar’s message is terse: Don’t mess with me

It was a classic peremptory gesture worthy of a tsar. Vladimir Putin’s apparent announcement of an imminent pardon to one of his most important rivals speaks volumes for the way politics and the law are conducted in Russia. Having spent $50 billion (Dh183.9 billion) on the forthcoming Sochi Winter Olympics, the most expensive in the history of the Games, the president has been clearing the decks. He wants the world to marvel at the efficiency and modernity of his Russia.

He does not want niggling questions about human rights to detract from his personal spectacle. And so, with a flourish of the hand, he ensures that his parliament passes a law granting an amnesty to 20,000 prisoners, including the Pussy Riot and the Amnesty Arctic protesters. The Amnesty decision was expected: To keep 30 mainly western environmentalists in jail would have caused their governments an acute dilemma in deciding whether to attend the Games. The Pussy Riot verdict was not a complete surprise either.

The sight of two young female members of a punk band behind bars was not the image that even Putin might feel comfortable projecting. The Mikhail Khodorkovsky problem is of a different order. Part of the first generation of oligarchs — a small group that snatched for itself the vast country’s natural resources in the early to mid 1990s as communism collapsed — he became one of the most important business figures during the Boris Yeltsin era. He also became the highest profile casualty of the new regime.

Within months of coming to office, Putin summoned the oligarchs and warned them in stark terms: Stay out of politics. The second part of his message — we want a share of the spoils — was not spoken out loud. Khodorkovsky refused to fall in line, continuing to build his Yukos energy giant and become ever more politically vocal. Putin’s response was to arrest him on charges of tax evasion in late 2003.

Strength of position

After that, the former oil chief was further convicted for oil theft and money laundering and his jail term extended, suggesting that Putin continued to see him as a political threat. Putin’s apparent “generosity” now in cutting Khodorkovsky’s prison term by around six months reflects the strength of his position.

For all the complaints (mainly from afar) about his human rights record — most recently the hideous clampdown on homosexuals — his grip on power is as strong as it has ever been. He assumes he has broken the will of his opponents, not least Khodorkovsky. “Don’t mess with me” remains Putin’s mantra. It is just that once in a while he sugarcoats the message.

— The Telegraph Group Ltd, London, 2013

John Kampfner was the Telegraph Moscow bureau chief, 1991-1994. His latest book The Rich: A History will be published in autumn 2014.