Mijail Khodorkovsky, Russian opponent in exile: "Putin knows that Russia would hand him over in exchange for the end of sanctions, that is why he will not leave power"

Just 20 years have passed since Mikhail Khodorkovsky (Moscow, 1963) went from being the richest oligarch in Russia to becoming the most famous prisoner in the country. He served 10 years in prison in cells overlooking the ice and today he wears the same timid look that always made it difficult to believe that he was Vladimir Putin's most hated opponent.

The Russian leader himself ended up granting him a pardon at Christmas 2013.. Since then he has lived in exile in London, where he continues to get into some puddles. He explicitly supported the armed rebellion of mercenary leader Evgeny Prigozhin even though he had no sympathy for Wagner's boss.. “When Putin arrived, it seemed to me that we were heading towards a truly democratic path, but I was wrong,” he explains to EL MUNDO during a brief visit to Spain, a country whose transition model interests him.. He believes that “since 2014, Russia has been falling, step by step, to a practically formalized regime of dictatorship.”

Is the end of the regime near due to the war? Or did the war happen because the regime has no future? During his terms, Putin undertook warlike actions on four occasions to solve his government's problems.. Now you have started a war again because you have felt that your support within Russian society is falling. You called on Russians to support Evgeny Prigozhin's mutiny. Do you not trust a democratic transition? For a regime change apart from a general atmosphere in society, there has to be a collapse, a failure within the regime. Of course, there are going to be bad guys on one side and the other.. Prigozhin was one of those bad guys, but he weakened the regime significantly. A peaceful decline of the regime is possible, provided that the regime realizes that there are other options.. I will give an example so that I can be understood.. Around 200,000 or 300,000 people took to the streets of the capital of Belarus, Minsk, in 2020.. They were protesting against the falsification of the elections of the president of Belarus and had the support of Belarusian society. However, when they approached the prison where the political prisoners were held, the doors were closed and they stopped there even though they could have broken them and freed the inmates.. There the Belarusian revolution ended and a period of reaction began that has left all opponents emigrated or in prisons.. What happened in Belarus teaches us a lesson: if you are not willing to go to the end, do not take people out into the streets. Do you then believe that Putin will die with his boots on? Everything seems to indicate that this will be what will happen. If Putin had left power definitively in 2008, he would have remained in people's memories as a not-so-bad president.. When he returned to office in 2012, people took it worse. In the Spanish transition, which I know a little about, there were a series of guarantees [for the previous regime]. After 2022, I don't think anyone can guarantee anything to Putin. Because Putin's surrender is worth lifting sanctions and a future Russian government will be willing to hand Putin over [to international justice] under those conditions.. He knows it perfectly. That is why he will maintain power as long as he can. If Putin takes kyiv, if he takes over most of Ukraine and looks victorious…. What will he do next? That's what I try to explain to European politicians.. Imagine: you are president of Russia, you have occupied Ukraine, a place where two thirds of the population hate you and they have set up a guerrilla, partisans.. You have a destroyed territory, and you have to spend money on reconstruction, because otherwise there will be waves of refugees to Russia. It also has a million people who are already used to being paid for killing, because they have gone into combat to earn 10 times more than before and, of course, they want to continue with the 'banquet'.. At that time, it has been 10 years in which the country's economy is not growing, so the well-being of the people rather falls.. And on top of that, no one can take away the sanctions.. What are you going to do? Go for more. In my opinion it is obvious. And what exactly would it mean to go for more? People forget about the ultimatum that Putin gave at the end of 2021: retract NATO to the borders of the year 1997. That means: Baltic countries, Poland…. You may even decide to include East Germany. Putin's thinking is that Europe will ultimately hand over Ukraine. And then he's going to hand over the Baltics, and with that NATO breaks up, so he can do whatever he wants afterwards.. Putin [with Kiev already subdued] would try to recruit people in Ukraine for his army: the country would be collapsed, with nothing to do, there would be people willing to fight against Putin and also for Putin: that is the Donbas model. I estimate he could recruit a million people, enough to take the Baltics. How did Putin go from the almost bloodless annexation of Crimea and the covert, limited interference in Donbas of 2014 to the full-scale invasion of 2022? Without a doubt those Such erroneous decisions were made because their environment was reduced as a result of COVID. We know the names and surnames of the people who led to those erroneous decisions.. [Businessman] Yuri Kovalchuk, [pro-Russian oligarch] Victor Medvedchuk and [FSB intelligence service general Sergei] Beseda. We know Kovalchuk's ideology: imperialist and traditionalist. Medvedchuk did it more for money: he has invested more than 1 billion corrupting Ukraine, and it worked for him. And the other [Beseda] told Putin that the regions of Ukraine were going to welcome him with flowers. It seems that the regime defrauded itself. This is how authoritarian regimes usually end: they lose their link with reality. Between 2013 and 2014 there was only one big difference between both countries: Ukraine was more or less democratic and Russia was more or less authoritarian.. If Putin had been in a different state of mind he could have bought or leased Crimea.. We could have been like France and Belgium. The situation turned out to be completely different. Ukraine began to consolidate itself even more as a nation, in ten years Ukraine has made great progress and Putin finds himself with a state that is considered totally different from Russia. 2014 was Putin's mistake, and 2022 is its continuation. What attitude should Europe have towards Russia? There are two bad ideas. The first is to talk about Russia going to disintegrate, which is not realistic and if it were it would be dangerous.. And in any case it serves to scare people and rally them around Putin. The second bad idea is sanctions: Europe is a rule of law, so every limitation of rights must be described by law. Unfortunately, there have been almost two years of sanctions, and there are still no strict rules on how to get out of the sanctions.. It should be clear to anyone. What do you think would happen if Putin dies tomorrow? If a brick falls on Putin's head tomorrow, [Prime Minister] Mikhail Mishustin would be the successor.. Russian history suggests that it would not retain power for long: there were transition periods after Stalin and after Brezhnev. One of the main missions of the opposition, apart from stopping the war, is to influence that process. To overthrow a dictatorship, apart from a general atmosphere of society, there has to be a collapse within the regime itself: the Army is not willing to shoot against the people.