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The richest man in Russia,

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

seized at gunpoint by Russian Special Forces...

Khodorkovsky is locked up

in an overcrowded Russian prison.

So, to stay at a prison,

why didn't you leave the country?

Out!

To hear Vladimir Putin tell it,

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a villain

in a real-life gangster movie.

But to Putin's opponent's,

Khodorkovsky's ten years in a Siberian prison

made him a hero for the cause of human rights and democracy.

Now out of prison,

Khodorkovsky is looking for a third act.

That drew my interest

at a time when we all seem haunted

by Russia's role in the world,

so I started a film about it.

While I can go to Russia, he could not.

He's wanted there for murder.

So like many stories about Russia these days,

this one started in London.

Putin and Khodorkovsky they are both very strong guy.

- Everyone else, weaker. - Yes.

But Putin...

respects Khodorkovsky as a rival.

He really respects him, because he is strong.

Just behind Red Square, there's a shopping mall

where actors get paid for posing in tourist photos,

playing Russia's past leaders.

In the winter of 2018,

I was told that the number of Stalin's was multiplying.

A local joked was that this was a sign.

Russia was nearing a pageantry of election season.

Well, there is no election season.

There's election theater.

The Kremlin has to create their own counter candidates.

Because no one wants to be a candidate against Putin

because you will lose anyway.

Today's election theatre

is what has become of Russia's experiment in democracy.

A bold attempt to shift from years of Communist rule

to free market capitalism.

In 1991, the Soviet Union has convulsed

in a struggle of its future.

But oligarch Communists come to an empire

in a system that centralized government control.

A new generation demanded economic and political freedoms.

Their charismatic leader, who was Boris Yeltsin.

Yeltsin! Yeltsin! Yeltsin!

Boris Yeltsin has become the one rallying point

for oppositions and the hardliners.

I was there as the BBC Moscow correspondent

from '88 to the end of '91.

This is Martin Sixsmith.

Martin Sixsmith.

Martin Sixsmith.

BBC News Moscow.

Yeltsin was a very, very inspirational figure.

Back in 1991, he was the man for the moment.

Yeltsin! Yeltsin!

It just felt like, you know,

a sort of, see change in the fortunes of a country.

I remember writing

all these sort of, great optimistic articles

about how decades of communism have come to an end

and now we were going to have a new Russia,

a new Russia with democracy and freedom, and openness.

And looking back, I'm...

a little ashamed that I wrote all that,

because the signs were there, even then, I think,

that, um, it wasn't going to work out.

He was a man of great intelligence, and great vision.

He was also a very decisive man.

As soon as a door opened, he was straight through it.

He'd been a member of the young

communist organization, Komsomol.

Not because he believed in communism

but because Gorbachev and the Perestroika era

started to relax the ban on private enterprise

starting with the Komsomol.

By the time the collapse of the Soviet Union happened at 1991,

he had some cash in his pocket.

He created the first commercial bank in Russia.

"The Holocaust", he said,

"I thought of this all as a game,

and I was good at playing the game."

Exactly. He was good at playing the game,

but most people were very bad at playing the game.

Moving from the Soviet Union into capitalist Russia,

most Russians were completely naive.

Because they had read all these propaganda

for all these years.

With capitalists, where people was, you know...

big cigars, and money coming out of their pockets.

And they imagined that you would get rich automatically.

Where they grew up,

everything was taken care of by the state.

You know, free economy sounds nice.

But you have to make choices every five minutes.

In the early '90s, Russians face lots of choices

they didn't really understand.

Egged on by American free market boosters,

the Russian government announced a program

to hand out a chip worth around 40 dollars to every citizen.

The chips were called "vouchers."

And could be traded sole for cash,

or exchanged for shares in small or state-owned enterprises.

They were sold as golden tickets

to escape the dead end of communism.

It was a time of great economic hardship,

and the ordinary people didn't realize

what this piece of paper was worth.

But the people who did,

some type of people with suitcases full of cash,

and they said, "Look, you don't need that piece of paper.

Here, we'll give you ten dollars.

And you can go and buy some bread."

The more Khodorkovsky made,

the more vouchers and companies he could buy.

Either on the open market or in backroom deals.

It was gangster capitalism,

with the rule of laws weak and bendy as a rubber band.

Under communism, the absence of personal wealth

meant there were few targets for violent criminals.

Now, organized crime groups

prey on the new rich of the capitalist era.

Moscow's become the murder capital of Europe.

If you were rich, and people knew you were rich,

you were a target.

It's Wild West capitalism.

In '92, we launched The Moscow Times.

And we had a lot of news.

A lot of people got killed,

and many, many companies were looking for protection.

The Moscow Times developed pretty well.

And then, two years later, I launched Cosmopolitan.

Which, from day one, was an enormous commercial success.

And it attracted a lot of shady people.

I thought, you know, maybe it's better

to get one of these rising oligarchs as a shareholder.

There was one guy in particular that I got interested in.

And it was Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

They moved to a very fancy castle in Moscow.

Machine guns all over the place,

he had former KGB colonels running his security.

This was not Russia, this was...

Khodorkovsky land, you know,

Medvedev has a nice house,

Nevzlin was next door,

and then, there was Khodorkovsky.

I said that, "Most of the times,

it's a fiercely independent newspaper.

And if we sell ten percent of our sales...

we want to remain a fiercely independent newspaper."

And he thought about it, and he said yes.

He was an extremely...

intelligent person.

But of course, using every trick in the book available to him.

And at that time,

this transition from communism to capitalism...

uh, was so fast,

that it was impossible for the legal structure to keep up.

But it's Berezovsky, who was one

of the big seven oligarchs very famously said...

"The seven of us controlled 50 percent...

of the whole Russian economy."

Two of the oligarchs placed big bets

on the future of television.

Boris Berezovsky bought a national network

called Channel 1.

He thought he'd cash in

by turning a Soviet propaganda vehicle

into a selling machine.

Vladimir Gusinsky set his sights on starting a new network

called NTV.

The original concept of NTV was a TV channel,

which is not controlled by the government.

An investor who was... Vladimir Gusinsky.

He didn't know anything about TV at all, but...

there was a benefit.

He badly underestimated how much it would cost.

Bravo.

Gusinsky spent hundreds of millions of dollars

buying movies, launching game shows

and building an independent news division from scratch.

Thanks to the Soviets,

most everyone in Russia had TV sets.

So the money started rolling in.

The oligarchs organized between themselves.

"I do the oil, you do the cable communications,

you do the real estate."

So, it was one big, uh, scam.

For the oligarchs, the scam of Russian capitalism

was only possible as long as there was a political system

that protected private property and individual rights.

Call it "democracy."

But if the communists returned to power, well...

that would have been bad for business.

Yeltsin was up for re-election.

But the country was in a really, really bad state.

People looked around, if this is...

you know, capitalism that they promised,

we don't want anything to do with it.

The government coffers were empty,

so people's salaries weren't being paid,

pensions weren't being paid.

And if you imagine, as a president

who's not paying people's pensions and people's salaries,

you're not gonna be very popular.

It really did look as if Gennady Zyuganov,

the communist leader, who's going to beat Yeltsin

hands down at the election.

Spasiba!

The problem was that, Yeltsin,

at that point, was so weak.

He was at the three percent approval rate.

He was sick, he had all these heart attacks,

he was down and out.

One of the very new things which NTV started doing,

was a puppet show calledKukly.

It was a really... a satirical, satirical show.

♪ Besame

♪ Besame mucho

In one of the show,

Mr. Yeltsin was portrayed as Don Quijote.

And the head of his security

was portrayed as his, uh, Sancho Panza.

It's not Russian tradition to laugh at the president,

so laughing at... at a czar, so to say, at an emperor...

was something unheard... unheard of.

Yeltsin was in a very difficult situation.

We'd film him, and he'd be...

staggering across the room, barely able to stand upright.

It was clear that he was quite ill.

But of course, there was a natural...

sympathy and support for Yeltsin from a Russian TV.

Yes, probably, it was not very fair

but his opponent was a communist.

Who, openly, was saying that,

"No such thing as freedom of... of the press, or of this...

under his rule.

Openly supporting Yeltsin,

NTV hatched an elaborate plan

to hide the president's ill health.

Malashenko sent a crew to Yeltsin's country home

where he was secretly confined to bedrest,

after a major heart attack.

We had to demonstrate that Yeltsin

is still alive, at least.

He was too seriously ill to travel to Moscow.

So we took some furniture from his Kremlin office

and we reproduced it at his country house.

So at this set, he was visited by Prime Minister Chernomyrdin

And Yeltsin spoke with him for 30 seconds,

signed some paper, and it was shown on TV.

Many times I was told that it's a thing I shouldn't do.

My response is very simple. It was and it is

that I would rather elect the corpse of Yeltsin

than elect Zyuganov.

We had suddenly, this amazing, new Yeltsin.

And, you know, maybe the doctors

have given him a shot of adrenaline or something.

But I think what had really re-invigorated him

was the deal he'd cut with the oligarchs.

They struck a Faustian bargain.

Which has become known as loans for shares.

In every Faustian bargain,

the devil is in the details.

On the verge of collapse,

Yeltsin's government desperately needed cash

to pay salaries and pensions.

The oligarchs agreed to funnel money to the state

by making a series of loans

the government couldn't afford to pay.

When the loans did default,

the oligarchs got the right to buy

Russia's biggest state enterprises.

And sham auctions run by the oligarchs themselves.

On TV, the deals played like

arms-length banking transactions.

In reality, the oligarchs have cut inside deals

to pay bargain basement prices

for Russia's most valuable assets.

Khodorkovsky was interested in a massive state

oil company called Yukos.

His bank Menatep, was the only bettor at the auction,

which was run by... Menatep.

At the time, Yukos was valued at five billion dollars.

Menatep offered and paid what it had on-hand,

three hundred and ten million. A steal.

It was all conflict of interest.

There was no transparency, it was just one big mess.

You know, we wrote about this stuff.

And Menatep was a shareholder of The Moscow Times.

Khodorkovsky himself was not sitting on our board,

but Leonid Nevzlin, his right hand man.

So this Nevzlin, was, you know, fuming.

Was there ever any pressure on you

to write something that was kind of, pro-Yukos?

This was the biggest mistake of the oligarchs

and the journalists, and the liberals.

I blame them as much as the communists

and the other forces, even more.

Because they were the people who has the vision

and, and the will to change, and...

and they were going to create a new Russia.

And what do they do the first time they get into trouble

in, you know, in '96...

their candidate may lose.

They just throw out the whole idea

of a normal democratic process.

Putin is also a product of the '90s.

Vladimir Putin came from nowhere.

He's been a minor official in the KGB

in East Germany when the war collapsed.

And found himself out of a job.

He found a post up in Leningrad

with... a man called Anatoly Sobchak.

If you worked your whole life with Sobchak,

the most liberal man in Russia,

you must be an okay guy.

That's what I thought.

In fact, Putin was accused

of launching a kickback scheme

to embezzle money meant for food for St. Petersburg,

which was facing a famine.

When members of the city council raised the issue,

Sobchak did not fire Putin.

He promoted him to deputy mayor.

As if to commemorate the moment,

Putin commissioned this documentary about himself.

He kept the title simple.

When Putin's boss failed to win re-election in 1996,

Putin and some friends flew to Moscow

where they landed low-level jobs for the Kremlin.

Putin held six jobs in three years.

By 1999, he was Prime minister,

and Yeltsin's likely successor.

But Putin didn't get to the top all by himself.

The oligarchs, were in fact, the force,

that in many ways, brought Vladimir Putin to power.

Putin was put there, very much, to carry on Yeltsin's rule.

With the help of ultimately, four people.

Yeltsin's daughter and her husband,

and two of the oligarchs who were close to Yeltsin,

Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich.

They were looking for a successor

who would, basically guarantee their safety

and guarantee their wealth.

One of the so-called oligarchs

set about selling Putin to the public.

Boris Berezovsky used his TV channel

to mock Putin's political rivals,

and promote his image as a tough leader.

When a series of explosions

killed hundreds in Moscow,

some suspect that Putin himself might have been involved.

But at the time, TV news footage

highlighted Putin's tough response to the bombings,

which he blamed on Chechen terrorists.

He's tough.

And I think this is the thing that we need

in this country at the moment. Some toughness.

Yeltsin left office on December 31st, 1999.

And appointed Putin acting president.

Putin, in turn, promised to forgive Yeltsin

for any sins or crimes he may have committed.

It was another inside deal,

sealed by a new election a few months later.

Putin running as an incumbent, won easily.

Eighteen years later, he's still in the same office.

Putinism is a way to restore...

pride in your country.

Putinism in itself...

there's nothing wrong with it.

Uh, when Putin started...

he did a lot of good things for the country.

Because it was a mess.

People were completely dispirited.

Um, people longed...

to, to be part of something.

You know, if you grew up in a world power,

and then the rest of the world

faced you as a joke, as a Banana Republic,

it's very humiliating.

So people really needed such a fable.

Putin has declared that he supported

the liberal views of Yeltsin,

and that he was going to keep Russia

on the course of liberty and openness.

But even then, you could see that Putin was looking for a way

to recalibrate this relationship

between political barrier and the oligarchs.

At first he said, "Look, we'll do a deal,

uh, I'm not gonna question

the results of the privatization process,

which meant I'm not gonna try and take back

your business empires that you've...

got through the, uh, loans for shares auctions.

As long as you keep out of politics."

For the moment,

that separation of business and politics

served Khodorkovsky's interests.

For Khodorkovsky, business had been hard enough.

He left banking to focus on Yukos.

He travelled to remote regions of Siberia

to learn how to pool oil out of the ground,

move it and sell it.

And he had to motivate workers and managers.

He never needed to care for efficiency or competition.

All these shady global oil companies

that, you know, just lost money,

and were totally inefficient.

He turned it around, he started streamlining these companies.

Khodorkovsky, from a business perspective,

did an amazing job.

But you know, small towns in Siberia,

a lot of the people who worked there, they lost their job.

Many local mayors were very unhappy.

And some mayors...

died.

One of those mayors was Vladimir Petukhov,

of Nefteyugansk, a major Yukos hub.

Petukhov was furious with Khodorkovsky

for laying off nearly 15,000 workers.

Delays in payroll, and battles over paying local taxers.

Khodorkovsky claimed that Petukhov

was in the grip of Chechen gangsters.

And using taxes to pay for bribes.

So Khodorkovsky flew to Nefteyugansk with bags of cash

to make direct payments to teachers,

nurses and city workers.

In protest, the mayor embarked on a hunger strike.

Until finally, a deal was cut.

Four days later, the mayor was shot.

At first, we went to Nefteyugansk

to look at the oil industry

weeks after the murder of the mayor.

And Khodorkovsky was hated there,

because Khodorkovsky at that time was already a billionaire,

and these were the people who were,

basically, unable to get food.

I got angry as a young journalist

and I wrote what I saw.

I don't know whether...

Khodorkovsky's man,

or himself was involved in the death of the mayor.

I wouldn't put it past them.

Petukhov, the mayor,

was murdered on Khodorkovsky's birthday.

Birthdays have been interesting.

The other famous case is Ana Politkovskaya.

The crusading journalist who was investigating

lots of Kremlin corruptions.

And she was murdered on Putin's birthday.

Some observers called it a meltdown.

Russian stocks are at their lowest levels

since President Boris Yeltsin had heart surgery in 1996.

The biggest concern now is that the Russian government

will be forced to devalue the ruble.

He was opening schools,

you know, his foundation was doing the work.

He was the entrepreneur with the vision.

The type of entrepreneur that Russia needed,

to create this new economy.

And he immediately brought in Western

know-how, new technology,

And in a few years built,

you know, one of the best oil companies in the world.

Khodorkovsky's work at Yukos paid off.

When the ruble rose along with the oil prices,

Just after the turn of the century,

the Russian economy was booming.

Powered in large part by oil.

That was a business victory...

but it was also a moment of political opportunity.

Who would take credit for the turnaround?

Former KGB agent turned politician?

Or the ruthless oligarch

whose attention was quickly turning to politics?

Khodorkovsky's an interesting man.

Because, now, he has all these money.

He started thinking about, you know,

"What's next? What is my role in society?"

And this is why he clashes with Putin.

There are rumors that Putin in particular,

didn't like one program...

where he was portrayed as a...

midget man, who became a ruler of the country.

Due to his power of magic.

At some point, magic disappeared,

and people see this midget man for what he is.

Yeltsin could be angry at some program,

but, uh, were no reprises.

Putin and his people had an entirely different attitude

towards TV.

Putin was the product of television.

They made him.

He was absolutely nobody.

I mean, nobody ever heard of Vladimir Putin.

The fact that television could actually help

make him into president, within six months.

I think was enough for him to understand the real power.

If TV could make his reputation...

it could also break him.

Seven months after Putin became president,

a terrible underwater explosion ripped apart the Kursk,

a Russian nuclear submarine.

As the nation anxiously watched

the efforts to rescue a few survivors...

Putin was photographed hosting a barbecue

at the seaside resort.

For ten days, relentless TV news reports

shredded Putin's reputation,

by chronicling the incompetence

and dishonesty of the government.

To recover, Putin rushed to talk to the widows of the sailors.

But rather than take responsibility,

he looked to administer blame on television.

Putin, as somebody who was both

born and bred in the Soviet Union

but more importantly, bred by the KGB,

has this very conspiratorial view of the world.

And that view of the world suggests that people don't have

any free will, um, and history,

therefore, doesn't have any free will.

That everything is pre-planned, plotted by somebody else.

So he immediately assumed that this was a plot...

uh, to subvert him.

There was a very emotional, I think, genuine outburst.

Vladimir Putin, president of Russia.

What happened with the submarine?

- Thank you, Mr. President. - Thank you.

Putin's command of the media was quickly evident.

Even in the TV images of one of the grieving relatives,

whose voice was silenced, with eerie efficiency.

Putin and his people have KGB background.

I'm talking about control.

What you don't control, is a potential threat.

What you control is safe.

Everything should be controlled.

So those things they did was to establish control,

over TV, because uncontrolled TV was a threat.

After the Kursk episode,

Putin's government took over the two major TV networks

controlled by oligarchs.

Facing the prospect of prison,

Gusinsky and his chief executive Malashenko, fled the country.

Berezovsky soon followed.

When Boris Berezovsky fell out with Putin

in such a spectacular and public way,

uh, he fled to London, and I had quite lots to do with him.

He asked me if I could write his...

biography for him.

So I spoke to him over the years,

and you know, socially, and, uh,

at times, I recorded the conversations as well.

...has led Putin after

the tragedy of

Kursk submarine, and the most...

During our meeting, he told me that...

uh, I tried to destroy him.

After that... he's really not good well.

At this time, I need to see my friend...

- Yes. - As a wronged man.

You know, he kicked Berezovsky out

to control of the first channel.

He kicked Gusinsky out of the country,

and... to control of NTV.

He had the airwaves.

Once he controlled the narrative and the image,

which is everything in Russia,

uh, he could take then control

of the commanded hearts of the economy,

the oil, uh, and take on the biggest tycoon.

Putin had a very valid point.

Half of the parliament is on the payroll of Khodorkovsky,

many of the top people in the oil ministry

are people appointed by the oligarchs.

And you think, you know, "What is this?"

If I want to be a real president I need to have my own people

and I need to get these people out of politics.

It was said at the time that you were busy courting

or even buying influence in the Duma.

♪ Exxon

Khodorkovsky invited the head of Exxon mobile,

and said, "Look, my company is open, transparent,

why don't we have a partnership?

We can be a massive player on the world market."

If you are Vladimir Putin

sitting in the Kremlin, at a time when...

the world is going to war over oil,

and you have your least favorite oligarch...

saying to the Americans,

"I've got lots of oil. Do you want to come and share it?"

You know, it's like a slap in the face.

The struggle for power surfaced with an oil deal.

Small company Northern Oil,

paid seven million dollars for the rights to an oil field.

Which had sold soon after,

for 600 million dollars.

to a government company, Rosneft.

The man at the center of the deal was Igor Sechin,

a close friend of Vladimir Putin.

Were kickbacks involved?

Khodorkovsky wanted to make an issue of the deal

at an upcoming nationally televised forum on corruption.

Putin had asked Russia's biggest businessmen

to a round table discussion on television on the theme

on the theme of corruption.

Most of the guys who took part

had the wisdom to figure out

that it was a little bit of a fig leaf.

But Khodorkovsky, he came

under the whole pile of slides

which reported that Russians felt that corruption existed

at the highest levels of government.

And they then got into the discussion

what Khodorkovsky thought was a dodgy deal.

This Northern oil deal,

was Putin happy that you mentioned it?

You saw it from the facial expression of Putin,

he was really, really angry.

Especially coming from Khodorkovsky.

There were all these warning signs.

Many of his people were arrested.

It was hard for me to understand

why Khodorkovsky was smiling

or how he could say that what was happening

is standard practice.

Just four months after the TV battle with Putin,

the top security official of Yukos,

Alexey Pichugin, was arrested and tried in secret

in connection with the series of contract killings.

Which would include the murder of Mayor Petukhov

That was strange,

because five years earlier, the case have been dropped

when the likely killers, two Chechen gangsters,

have been murdered.

Now the Kremlin was pushing a fresh story.

The Chechens were replaced with new killers

who suddenly confessed and testified

that Pichugin ordered the hit.

When Pichugin refused to implicate Khodorkovsky,

Pechugan claimed he was dosed psychotropic drugs.

When that didn't work, the new triggerman

claimed that the order to kill the mayor

come from Pichugin's boss, Leonid Nevzlin.

The richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky

seized at gunpoint by Russian Special Forces.

Khodorkovsky is locked up

in an overcrowded Russian prison.

Did your hunger strike succeed?

Was Lebedev let out of the dungeon?

I remember calling my editor.

I said, "They just arrested Khodorkovsky."

And the response from London was,

"Well, it couldn't have happened to a better man."

I don't want to paint Khodorkovsky

as an angel if he wasn't.

But I was rather horrified

when I saw Vladimir Putin holding a copy of my stories,

saying, "Look, even the Western press outside,

he was a terrible man."

It was very clear that this is not about finding the truth,

or finding what happened.

It was about putting papers together,

so that it looks like it's a real case.

But, in fact, it's not a real case.

As someone with a legal background in Russia,

I had to try to interpret

and explain this to American lawyers.

Khodorkovsky and Lebedev were put in a cage

to show everyone who is the boss here.

Khodorkovsky was accused

of tax evasion, embezzlement.

All these things.

But it's this particularly hard to say

whether or not he's guilty.

Because the law was in such a fluid state in those years.

All the other oligarchs did exactly the same things.

And they were free to keep doing it.

During the first trial, the Russian attorneys

were trying to pretend like

they're defending an ordinary case.

The Russian prosecutors think

the more papers they put together,

the more it looks legitimate.

They wrote like hundreds of volume of material

of basically nothing.

For example, the used company telephone directory.

As an evidence of the criminal enterprise.

Yukos as a company was accused of not paying taxes

for six years.

Khodorkovsky was discussing payment of back taxes

that would settle Yukos's

debts to the State.

And when Yukos agreed to that,

then another demand would come in.

A new demand will be higher this time.

So it wasn't a case of wanting

to recoup the taxes that haven't been paid.

It was a case of wanting to destroy Yukos.

There was a bankruptcy auction.

And I was denied access to it

with no basic or any legitimate reason.

A mysterious, newly-created company

Baikal Finance Group

suddenly emerged to bid for Yukos.

But Baikal had no assets.

And its headquarters turned out to be a vodka bar.

Two hours outside of Moscow.

When Baikal won the auction,

it sold Yukos to the government-controlled Rosneft.

Rosneft is the state oil company,

and it is run by one of Putin's closest friends,

Igor Sechin.

Sechin was Putin's man.

And when Putin renationalized a lot of companies,

he created a new clause.

Oligarch 2.0.

In most countries in the world,

oil companies are owned by the state.

Nothing wrong with that. Good news for the Russians.

You know? That's how 99 percent of the people saw it.

The fact that the oligarchs were so reviled and resented

by the Russian people

was a fantastically useful tool for Putin.

Putin very famously and publicly declared

"I'm going to destroy the oligarchs as a class."

And every Russian would know where the quotation came from.

Because Stalin said very famously,

"I'm going to destroy the rich, peasants as a class."

And when he did bring the oligarchs to heel,

it was incredibly popular.

What he says to Khodorkovsky and to the country

is that nothing belongs you.

That you have no legitimate rights to it.

We control everything and we can take away everything from you

if you cross us.

Do you think that being in prison

gave you special insight to Putin and the people around him?

Former oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky

who was jailed for embezzlement and tax evasion in 2003

is back in court.

New charges brought against him, could see his term extended

until 2017.

The second trial was announced

when Khodorkovsky was coming up

to the point that he might get through.

It seems very clear, Putin did not want him

to get through.

The second trial was a sequel in black comedy.

In the first trial,

the government convicted Khodorkovsky

for not paying taxes on the oil HE sold.

In the second,

the government claimed he had never sold the oil.

He'd stolen it.

But if he had stolen it, where did he put it?

And if he never sold it, why did he owe the taxes?

Is it not clear?

It's very important for me how this trial will finish because

according to that, I'll know which country in the end

my children will live in.

Putin is very afraid of Khodorkovsky.

And he wants him to be in the prison forever.

This is against Russia.

This is against Russia's future.

And it means that this is not a country of law.

This is a country of dictatorship.

When he was in jail, he suddenly gained

through his stamina, through his calm,

through his resolution

that moral authority and respect of people.

I wouldn't say he has legitimacy

as a political figure.

But I think the perception of him

has...

made sort of a 180 degree turn.

♪ I found my thrill

♪ On blueberry hill

There was a period when Putin

because of the constitution had to step down as president

and become prime minister.

And his colleague, Dmitry Medvedev

became president.

There was a lot of talk at that time

that perhaps Medvedev might be a rival

power base to Putin's.

Turned out to be completely incorrect.

Because at the end of Medvedev's term as president,

he simply stepped down and Putin came back into power.

♪ My dream came true

♪ The wind In the willow played ♪

♪ Love's sweet melody

Till 2008, I think Russia was on the right track.

And Putin was okay.

Then Putin decided to become more authoritarian.

He also decided that the country could not live without him.

That's what power does to you.

You think you are the country, and the country thinks

without Putin, there is no Russia.

More than a 100 thousand protesters

flooded Moscow's Bolotnaya Square

to protest Putin's return to the presidency.

The protesters at least could imagine Russia without Putin.

The only way we could potentially get him out of jail

is not through judicial system in Russia.

But through some sort of negotiations

involving Western leaders putting pressure on Putin.

The host nation of Russia

is continuing a well-timed release

of high profile prisoners.

We see a riot band member,

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has been freed

as part of president Putin's amnesty.

Putin really wanted to see

Western leadership coming to Sochi

and the pardon was his gesture

in anticipation of

gesture back from the Western leaders.

How did you find out that you were going to be released?

I haven't met him until he was released from prison.

We had some vodka.

Um, it was really unreal.

He was really thinking what his next public step

in that fight should be.

And then he said that "I'm ready to make the public move."

And he wanted to go to Kyiv.

In Kyiv, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators

demanded the government resign

for rejecting closer ties with the EU

in favor of better relations with Russia.

Demonstrators pulled back

under a hail of bullets fired by government forces.

In 2014, Khodorkovsky moved to London

and founded Open Russia.

An umbrella group that funds anti-Putin efforts

and invests in long-range visions for democracy in Russia.

The money for Open Russia comes from Khodorkovsky.

Somehow, even while serving hard time in Siberia,

he or his friends managed to protect some of his fortune.

While in Moscow, I spent a bit of time with Open Russia.

On the ground, their efforts were less than effective.

Volunteers didn't have strong enough glue

to paste up their posters.

And open Russia teleconferences

in which Khodorkovsky beamed himself into Moscow

only attracted the interest of a few dozen supporters.

Khodorkovsky is not a forgotten figure.

But you can't touch him

so he becomes more and more TV image.

Okay, not TV, he's not shown on TV.

Computer generated image, okay?

And it's not good, of course...

- for a politician.... - Virtual Khodorkovsky.

Virtual Khodorkovsky. Exactly.

Being outside of Russia,

he really cannot influence situations here.

He wants to be Jesus Christ, but, you know, he has a past.

Over time, complicated stories become more simple.

Shades of gray separate in the pools of black and white.

That simplicity can serve a political purpose.

In 1998, there were many suspects

in the brutal killing of Mayor Luzhkov.

From Chechen gangsters, to Mayor's wife.

Today in Nefteyugansk, there is only one.

Khodorkovsky's story marks the beginning of a journey

which ultimately will result

in violence.

And this is where we are today.

Where violence is the only truth.

At your disposal for resolving social contradictions

or political conflicts.

In England, over the past 15 years,

there have been a growing

number of mysterious deaths related to Russia.

Khodokovsky's lawyer was killed in a helicopter crash.

The anti-Putin Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko

was poisoned to death.

Six months after he delivered an affidavit,

the Russian's Secret Services

have paid for the murder of the mayor of Nefteyugansk

Boris Berezovsky was found dead.

His neck suspended by his own cashmere scarf.

But the coroner was unable to conclude

whether the hanging was a suicide or a murder.

Berezovsky became consumed by this obsession

that he was gonna bring down Putin

from London.

I would be very sad

if Khodorkovsky went the same way Berezovsky did.

I mean your life may be at risk in London.

Did you have a conversation with your wife

about continuing to speak out?

I can't speak of Russia too much.

One of the top Kremlin political aids,

uh, said publicly, "There's no Russia without Putin."

End of quote.

Probably the most insulting thing I've ever heard said

about my country.

Vladimir Kara-Murza is a former journalist

and anti-Putin political warrior.

He was close to John McCain

who asked him to be among those who carried his coffin.

Kara-Murza was poisoned twice while on assignment

for Khodorkovsky and Russia.

He played a key role in passing the Magnitsky act

which sanctions certain Russian individuals

for human rights abuses.

Kara-Murza now works with Khodorkovsky

to provide research and offer advice

to those considering sanctions

on members of Putin's inner circle.

We do have a new project of Open Russia called Dossier.

It takes the investigative journalist

down in Russia or outside of Russia and builds on that.

A key focus is the circle of new oligarchs

surrounding Putin.

One of them is Yevgeny Prigozhin,

nicknamed Putin's chef.

Following a recipe of covert ops,

the chef cooks up missions for Putin all over the world.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller accused Prigozhin

of launching cyberattacks

during the 2016 presidential election.

Others accused him

of running off-the-books military operations

from Ukraine to Africa.

When Khodorkovsky funded a group of journalists

to look into the matter, they were murdered.

Reportedly by people working for the chef..

Back in Russia, state-controlled TV

turns the story upside down,

blaming Khodorkovsky for not doing more

to protect the journalists.

Open Russia also helped to expose a plot

to kill a Russian double agent in Salisbury, England.

The attack deployed a military chemical weapon

which badly poisoned two people

and killed an innocent bystander.

Two members of the assassination team

were spotted by British surveillance cameras

and traced back through their driver's licenses

to the GRU.

Russian military intelligence.

With a perfume bottle full of Novichok,

a deadly nerve agent,

they travelled to Salisbury on the day of the attack

and then fled quickly back to Russia.

That interview

was sort of a double message saying, nothing is true.

And of course we're lying.

And two fingers up to the West.

But we're still doing it.

And it's okay to lie.

It's negation of facts and negation of truth.

Negation of reality.

What kind of campaign is Sobchak running?

Have you met her? And what do you think of her?

How's the campaign going?

- Smooth as it can be. - I understand.

Miss Sobchak just advises me to take part in her campaign.

She's doing things

which make her a very few friends in the Krem,

When there's a fence, we should understand,

that all we see

all this so-called campaign

is a, is a criminal game.

After years in prison, Khodorkovsky had learned

how to play the long game.

During the run of election theater,

he wasn't trying to

He was offering support to a number of political actors

who could amplify democratic principles over time.

Khodorkovsky wanted to speak by proxy

to a younger generation

and be ready for Russia after Putin.

They don't watch so much TV.

They surf the web, a domain the State is either been unwilling

or unable to control.

One web warrior, Alexei Navalny

is supported by Khodorkovsky.

Navalny is banned from TV or running for office.

But he can get more than 20 million views

on his YouTube channel.

Why do you think

that Putin finds you so dangerous or threatening?

During election season,

there is a march in honor of Boris Nemtsov,

an opposition politician who'd been murdered

by mysterious gunmen in front of the Kremlin.

Just a few days before he was to release evidence

of Russia's involvement in violence in Ukraine.

Preparations in government rules for the march

made it more protest theater than protest.

Only certain signs were allowed.

And the tiny contention from Open Russia

is not permitted to bring along it's posters.

All the politicians showed up in the bitter cold.

Ksenia Sobchak's family history haunted her campaign.

Her father was the mayor of St. Petersburg

who first hired Putin.

Many believe Ksenia is a secret agent of the Kremlin.

Maybe even Putin's goddaughter.

In Russia, where visions of the future are blocked

by an unchanging present under Putin,

conversations turn quickly to the past.

Putin looks back to days of empire

and wants to make Russia great again.

Russian liberals are nostalgic

for the democratic freedoms of the 90s.

But it's hard for them to argue in favor of the time

when a handful of men control the economy

and so many lived in fear of hunger,

violence, and economic chaos.

In such a past,

wouldn't most people settle for a present under Vladimir Putin?

In Russia's election theater,

everyone knows how the story will end.

Some actors play along and others improvise off a script.

But for now, outside of the big cities,

audiences seem happy enough

with the fairytale promoted by Putin.

And far off Krasnokamensk

where Khodorkovsky spent so many years in prison, election

theater has the folksy flair of a high school musical.

Everyone roots for a happy ending.

In a story scripted by the self-appointed man of the moment

who claims to have saved them from the villains of the past.

After Putin's next term,

can you imagine that he will step down?

Or do you think he will just keep going forever?

Who knows?

- Russia! Russia! Russia! - Russia! Russia! Russia!

Putin is now 18 years in power.

He has this group of friends around him

who are now feverously rich

and of course they don't wanna see him go.

Their whole wealth

comes only from him.

It's very hard to get out of this.

What do you think is Putin's worst nightmare?

I wondered how Khodorkovsky could think

that Putin was weak or fearful.

After all, on the struggle between the two men,

Khodorkovsky had lost.

But while in prison, Khodorkovsky learned

that you can sometimes win

when you're willing to lose everything.

The darker the night,

the brighter the stars.

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