Mikhail Khodorkovsky release: what are his options now?
Mikhail Khodorkovsky spent a decade in Russia's notoriously tough prison system, only to be released by presidential decree. What are his options now?
Go Home
Mr Khodorkovsky was born in Moscow and his parents, wife and children still live in the surrounding region, so the obvious thing to do is get on the first train back to the capital – especially as concern for his mother's illness was apparently the factor that drove him to finally seek a pardon. His parents, Boris and Marina, still live on the grounds of a college for traumatised children and orphans that Mr Khodorkovsky founded before his downfall about 38 miles to the West of the city. His own house in the same compound was never completed – the project ran out of money after his arrests.
His second wife, Inna, and their three children (a daughter born in 1991 and twin boys born in 1999) live in Istrinsky district, to the city's Northwest of the city. Inna, who has refused to move abroad despite advice to do so, said in a rare 2011 interview that emigration would be "practically impossible" for Mr Khodorkovsky. "He needs more than just a family, he needs to take part in society. And for him it would be very difficult to change his homeland," she said.
Emigrate
Mikahil Khodorkovsky has never been one to flee. He is said to have deliberately ignored advice to leave the country ahead of his arrest, despite being fully aware of the consequences. But despite his deep reluctance to move abroad, getting out of Russia would put Mr Khodorkovsky beyond the reach of the Russian authorities if they decided to bring fresh charges against him a third time – a possibility that was hinted at earlier this month by a deputy prosecutor. A base abroad would also prove more secure were he to launch a legal battle to reclaim Yukos's stripped assets.
An obvious destination would be the United States, where his son from his first marriage, Pavel, lives. But leaving the country could be fraught with difficulty if the authorities decide they would rather keep him in the country. For one thing, he would need to get hold of a valid passport, and laws restricting travel for debtors could easily be manipulated to keep him inside the borders.
Fight on
In his decade in prison, Mr Khodorkovsky has been compared more than once to Nelson Mandela – a morally superior political prisoner jailed because of the danger he posed to a thuggish regime. Some still consider him the only man who could head a credible opposition movement to Putin – and many others believe he would find it impossible to quit public life.
Could he emerge as an ally of younger opposition leaders like Alexei Navalny?
Maybe. But while jail time has done much to transform him into a martyr, Mr Khodorkovsky is still unflatteringly viewed by many Russians as an oligarch who robbed the nation in the 1990s. Pleading for clemency may also have damaged his standing in the eyes of some hard-line oppositionist. And many are already pondering whether he would have been released if he still posed a threat to Mr Putin – the unspoken question on many minds is, did he do a deal to get out?
Be a Great Russian Writer
Prison time has informed many of Russia's greatest literary figures, and Mr Khodorkovsky could be the next to join their pantheon – as a reactionary. At least, that is Liberal democratic Party Leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky's advice to the released prisoner.
"He reminds me a bit of the Count of Monte Cristo, Solzhenitsyn. He has rich material from his life," Mr Zhirinovsky said on Friday. "We have these very light-weight [thriller writer Boris] Akunin's, [surrealist novelist Victor] Pelevin's But such a venerable writer would write a lot. Maybe [he could write Dostoevsky's] The Possessed and expose the venality of the opposition."