Putin's Oil: The Yukos Affair and the Struggle for Russia

Putin's Oil: The Yukos Affair and the Struggle for Russia

Martin Sixsmith

Language: English

Pages: 320

ISBN: 1441199683

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


This title investigates Vladimir Putin's war for control of Russia's vast oil reserves, in particular Mikhail Khodorkovsky's oil firm, Yukos. Putin's Oil investigates the complex world of Kremlin politics, including conspiracies and conspiracy theories, allegations that Roman Abramovitch plotted with Putin to destroy Khodorkovsky, suspicions of betrayal and double agents in the Kremlin and in Yukos, murder charges against Khodorkovsky's partners, and the KGB defector who claims they were carried out by Kremlin agents. After the mysterious death in a helicopter crash of the Englishman who had taken over Yukos, the company's war against the Kremlin is now being waged by a troika of mild mannered Britons, pursued by Interpol arrest warrants and Moscow's fury. Khodorkovsky remains in a penal camp in far Eastern Siberia. Martin Sixsmith, former BBC Moscow Correspondent, has gained unprecedented access to many of the players in the drama. The resulting book is both a thriller and an analysis of the defining moments of Putin's presidency and their ongoing impact in Russian and world politics.

The Sacred Cinema of Andrei Tarkovsky

A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924

The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev's Freedom to Putin's War

You Are One of Them

Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular Imagination in Soviet Russia, 1917-1934 (Eastern European Studies Number Twenty-Two)

The Age of Ice: A Novel

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There were no allegations of drugs being used in Lebedev’s case, but a campaign of intimidation against the Yukos lawyers defending him began shortly after his arrest. Anton Drel told me he and his colleagues were systematically bullied and harassed. The pressure on me . . . began in July 2003 when Lebedev was arrested. I came to the Prosecutor’s Office, to see Lebedev, and investigator Karimov said that it was because of people like me that things in Russia were so bad . . . because I was helping

attend the annual Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations at the American Embassy in Moscow. There was some discussion among Yukos managers about whether or not he should go: such closeness to the Americans, whose interest in buying into Yukos was at least the partial cause of the unfolding crisis, had obvious potential to inflame yet further their already strained relations with the Kremlin. But Khodorkovsky went. The Fourth of July fell in the middle of a splendid Moscow summer that year

The sergeant relaxed visibly. In response to Khodorkovsky’s questions about who had ordered his arrest and on what charges, he shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘That’s nothing to do with me. You’ll be seeing the cops soon enough and they’ll tell you.’ The soldiers produced a black canvas hood and told the prisoner to put it over his head for the transfer to military transport. When Khodorkovsky protested, the sergeant said he was following orders, but he didn’t think it would have to stay on

taxes. It was a warning to Khodorkovsky, and an even more blatant message to Raymond that he may want to think twice about buying a company that was attracting such personal attention from the arm of the law. Irina Khakamada, the Deputy Speaker of the Duma and a supporter of Khodorkovsky, said it was an unavoidable conclusion that the upping of the Prosecutor’s campaign against Yukos was the direct result of the reports of the sale to ExxonMobil. At the conclusion of the World Economic Forum on 4

Lebedev, another recruit joined the band of entrepreneurs. Like them, Vladimir Dubov was in his twenties and full of youthful fire to succeed. He had been working at the State Institute for High Temperature Research, but it was his training as a lawyer that made him valuable to the firm. Menatep was now developing into a sizeable business and it needed legal expertise to negotiate its contracts with clients and with the state. Unlike the intense, serious-minded men he was joining, Dubov was a

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