Khodorkorvsky Pardoned

President Putin has today announced that he intends to pardon Mikhail Khodorkovsky who has spent more than a decade in prison.  This has come hot off the heels of the Russian Parliament's pardon of the two Pussy Riot demonstrators yesterday.   It's obviously an attempt to avoid international criticism of his rule on the run up to and during the forthcoming Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.  But I think is just another example of his playing the Kind Tsar to mask the absence of a truly independent judiciary in Russia.