Can anyone share with me some (new) insights on the Yukos drama?
 

What do you think that will happen?

I've lived over there for a few years , my dad is married to one, and I have a lot of half-russian sibblings, so I know the russian mentality pretty well.
Still though, I find this a hard one to crack.

-Putin has a massive ego, that's not exactly big news.
Despite that the russian government is in dire need of Yukos tax money.

-Russia can't afford a stop in pumping oil for even a minute.

So the not so farfetched plan would be for them to replace every government critic in the board and carry on operations as usual.

Hopefully they lock away all the people who have robbed Russian's of their nations natural reserves since the fall of communism. You can say 'capitalism' and a 'free market' but when 12 odd people greedily earn all the money in a nation that is as poor as Russia that is not the 'free market' at work it is robbery.

Such a situation is no different to how Saddam robbed the Iraqi people of their natural worth - i.e. simply because he came to power does not mean he should have the right to live as he did off of a nations natural reserves while his countrymen die from poor living conditions. Simply because these people played the right hand when communism fell, does not mean they deserve what they have, nor should they have the right to keep it all.

Very true,

Still, in a vast amount of cases it is former party officials who have recieved the upper hand compared to some very few capitalists who bought what they could.

But sure, the Russian natural reserves should belong to the russian people and benefit them. No question about it.

hmm.. why do you care about Yukos?

Not answering for him.

It's an interesting power struggle though, which could end up affecting a large portion of the western world, that's why it's something to keep an eye on.