
© BloombergFormer Russian oligarch and arch crime boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky is now trying to re-create the conditions that allowed him to build his former energy empire and further subject the Russian population to his criminal whims.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the one-time oil tycoon who spent a decade in President
Vladimir Putin's prison, staked a claim to the leadership of
Russia's opposition, which staged its biggest demonstration in years.
Khodorkovsky, living in exile in
Switzerland since his release in December, called on supporters help influence the nation's 2016 parliamentary elections as he restarted his Open Russia movement. In interviews with major European newspapers including
France's
Le Monde,
Spain's
El Pais and
Germany's
Der Spiegel, he made the case that Putin is making mistakes that may hasten his departure.
Russia's opposition yesterday staged its biggest event since 2012, when Putin returned to the Kremlin after four years as prime minister amid the largest protests against his rule. His popularity has rebounded to near record highs since then as the conflict in neighboring
Ukraine intensified. Even so, the government has been making mistakes that cost Russia and people will eventually realize that, Khodorkovsky told
El Pais.
"Khodorkovsky is seeing that the protest movement in the country remains quite significant, while among existing politicians almost none aspire to ally with him and be a moral leader," Mikhail Vinogradov, head of the St. Petersburg Politics Foundation, said by e-mail yesterday.
The "peace march" in Moscow drew about 26,000 people yesterday, according to Dmitry Nesterov, a coordinator for the Union of Observers for Russia. Estimates of the crowd size ranged between 5,000 according to police, and as much as 100,000 according to
Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader.
Comment: The "spirit of collaboration and collegiality" at Yale is apparently one that seeks to maintain cooperation with the brutality and genocidal psychopaths of Israel. America's educational institutions have always been more about indoctrination than actual education. Zionists have been playing victim and trying to cover their crimes with cries of anti-Semitism for far too long. People must speak out, and thankfully people like Rev. Chapman are doing so.