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.”