Newsletters / Only instability can be expected from today’s authorities in Russia

On November 26 Mikhail Khodorkovsky, founder of Open Russia, was a guest of Reuters Newsmaker. Addressing an audience in London and Moscow he said:

The situation in Russia is a good illustration of the theory confirmed by world history that authoritarian regimes can be more successful than democratic ones, but only for a small period of time. In Russia and the Soviet Union, such a period of time was around 15 years. Now, there is the beginning of stagnation, with corresponding instability. From today’s authorities in Russia, there is not much that can be expected – only instability.

Watch Reuters Newsmaker with MBK

MBK in an interview with Zhanna Nemtsova:

“The main problem of the government that Putin has built is that it lacks every form of legitimacy. There’s just Putin, and his performance in the polls. The entire army of civil servants takes its cue from just two things: the first is what Putin says; the second is their own pocket.”

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MBK on downing of Russian bomber by Turkish fighter:

“The fundamental problem with these people [Putin and Erdoğan], who have built similar regimes:  for both of them, human life is of less value than the ‘greatness of the state’ and their own ambitions. People, their needs and even their lives — they are secondary.”

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MBK on attack in Paris:

“This is a conflict between two civilisations:  the European one,  which after centuries of mutual annihilation has acknowledged the supreme value of human life, and another one, which does not recognise this value and regards man merely as a means for attaining other goals, which we may or may not understand.”

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MBK gave a posthumous award for Boris Nemtsov to his daughter Zhanna at the inaugural Sergei Magnitsky Human Rights Awards ceremony.

“Russia will be a democratic country. But for that to happen there will always have to be people, who despite all the risks are willing to continue that struggle. And there is now a new generation coming to take over from those who have passed on in this struggle.”

Watch here