The Kremlin: Khodorkovsky “irrevocably cut off” from Russia

Mikhail Khodorkovsky and others like him launching political campaigns for the selection of candidates for Russia’s 2018 presidential election are “irrevocably cut off from Russia,” said Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

“Only one thing can be said here: these [campaign projects] are developed and [prepared] by people who have already been irrevocably cut off from Russia, from what is going on here, and from Russia’s order of business,” he said.

Khodorkovsky’s project for the selection of a candidate for Russia’s September 2018 presidential elections was launched on a special website called vmestoputina.ru.

The first phase of the project involved the preparation of a list of possible candidates by various experts. The list included the likes of Yekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Roizman, Yabloko party members Grigory Yavlinsky and Lev Schlosberg, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, Parnas party leader Mikhail Kasyanov, former Constitutional Court judge Tatyana Morshchakova, and Boris Yeltsin’s daughter Tatiana Yumasheva. The politicians and public figures whose names appeared on the list were unaware of its compilation at the time.

Visitors to the site can have the option of voting for candidates who already appear on the list and of proposing their own candidates.