A GRIM TIME

摘要

Russia has reverted to the Wild East. But these days the crooks are the government. THE MAY 9 CELEBRATIONS ARE over. Global luminaries have gone home. Now comes Act II: the endgame in the takedown of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the founding CEO of Yukos Oiland once Russia's richest man. A Moscow court will deliver its verdict on May 16. The betting isn't guilty or not. It's how many years in prison—10, or something less? The case is only the most visible in a depressing pattern. Russia's rulers keep saying that the bad old days of the Wild East are gone. Yet how to explain the regular grudge killings of businessmen? The persecution of entrepreneurs, small and large, by tax authorities and rogue bureaucrats eager to line their own pockets? The epidemic corruption that is the hallmark of doing business in Russia?