My favorite part?

"Mr Putin's first victims were the media moguls Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky. "

The shiner is including Gusinsky here, as though Putin was doing the Russian people a great "reformation" service. When in fact, he went after Gusinsky because he had the [b]last[/b] independant national network in Russia, effectively [b]ending[/b] freedom of the press. Now everytime Putin doesn't like the way something is covered (i.e. Nord Ost), he threatens to end freedom of the press, to crackdown on "abuses" of the press... and the press get together and censor themselves. The print media has more autonomy... but no one really reads or relies on print media in Russia, because most papers are "yellow papers", used to attack the enemies of X organization/oligarch.

Berezovsky had a large part in putting him in power, and then he exiles Berezovsky. I don't take issue with that part of the sentence, because Berezovsky is a real thieving bastard. Things like the All Russian Automobile Alliance, where he issued "stock" to form a corporation... and then never did anything with it. Just took all the money. Many millions of dollars from the Russian people that were struggling with hyperinflation. Put simply, Berezovsky is a motherfucker, but even he was expelled because he was simply too powerful, because he posed competition... and because he had MOCT media, which could criticize the president.

I just find it hard to believe the way the Western Press covers Russia sometimes. X Oligarch getting sacked is not reform if he is replaced by an FSB official that is just as bad (the state still has shares in most large enterprises), who will continue to steal, and has the added job qualification of having committed crimes against the Russian people as a KGB agent.

Oh well, they do mention Putin's political motivation in questioning Xodorkovsky at the end.

BBC NEWS | Business | Prosecutors quiz Russia's richest man