Exiled tycoon the newest in an extended line of individuals charged for opposing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Revealed On 14 Oct 2025
Russia’s Federal Safety Service (FSB) has opened a felony case in opposition to exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, accusing him of making a “terrorist organisation” and plotting to violently seize energy.
The FSB mentioned on Tuesday that the fees relate to the actions of a Khodorkovsky-backed group that opposes the warfare in Ukraine. Quite a few people and teams inside and outdoors Russia have been prosecuted because the Kremlin has cracked down on even the smallest signal of dissent regarding its narrative of the invasion of its neighbour.
Beneficial Tales
record of three objectsfinish of record
There was no quick remark from Khodorkovsky or his Anti-Conflict Committee, which has been banned in Russia.
The oil tycoon, as soon as Russia’s richest man, served 10 years in a Siberian jail on fraud fees that he and lots of Western nations – the place his incarceration grew to become a trigger celebre – mentioned have been politically motivated.
Khodorkovsky rose to prominence as one in all a handful of rich businessmen who backed former President Boris Yeltsin within the Nineteen Nineties, gaining enormous energy over the Russian financial system in consequence.
He fell from grace as Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, tightened the Kremlin’s grip on beforehand independent-minded enterprise figures.
A lot of the remaining members of the group grew to become loyal supporters of Putin. Nonetheless, some fled, together with Roman Abramovich.
Abramovich’s former mentor, Boris Berezovsky, additionally fled to the UK, the place he grew to become a staunch critic of the Russian president. Russian courts handed down numerous sentences in opposition to him throughout his time in exile till his loss of life, ruled a suicide regardless of some doubt, in 2013.
Khodorkovsky left Russia after being launched from jail that very same yr, due to a presidential pardon granted on the premise that he wouldn’t have interaction in politics.
In December, Putin’s spokesperson accused Khodorkovsky of failing to maintain his finish of the deal after a Moscow courtroom imposed a superb on the exiled tycoon for administrative violations.
Laws in opposition to discrediting the Russian navy was launched after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It has repeatedly been utilized by Russia’s courts to jail and silence Putin’s critics.
In 2024, a courtroom in St Petersburg jailed Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician, for seven years for swapping grocery store worth tags for these with antiwar messages.
Since 2022, Khodorkovsky has positioned himself as a number one determine amongst Russian exiles who again Kyiv in opposition to Moscow. Shortly after the warfare’s outbreak, he was designated a “overseas agent” by Russia.
In December, Khodorkovsky mentioned Russia is a “totally fledged totalitarian dictatorship” and he desires to “struggle for a Russia ruled by the rule of regulation and political pluralism”.
