Former oligarch Khodorkovsky and anti-corruption activist Navalny team up in support of political prisoners

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of the oil company Yukos, has joined forces with opposition politician and anti-corruption activist Alexey Navalny to support political prisoners. Together, they have launched a project aiming to provide financial aid to individuals who have been prosecuted for political reasons in Russia. According to the project's description, a team of experts will select these individuals, who will then receive a lump sum of 100,000 rubles (just over $1,500, according to today’s exchange rate).

Twenty-four experts will work on the panel, including human rights advocates Pavel Chikov and Igor Kalyapin, journalists Andrei Loshak, Olesya Gerasimenko, and Andrei Kozenko, and lawyers Dmitry Dinze and Vadim Klyuvgant. The panel has already approved aid for 22 different prisoners.

Currently, the list of recipients includes left-wing activists Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozhzzhaev, who are serving sentences on counts of alleged mass rioting and violence against the police in the Bolotnaya Square case. The list also includes Ukrainian citizens Oleg Sentsov (a film director only recently sentenced to 20 years for terrorism) and Nadezhda Savchenko (a Ukrainian pilot facing murder charges in Russia), as well as Oleg Navalny, Alexei Navalny’s brother, who is currently serving a sentence for fraud.

We would like to help everyone, but we have limited resources. That is why we have formed a panel of experts who will help us make decisions in each specific case. If you or your loved ones have gotten into trouble for political activism, for fighting for your rights, or for expressing your civic beliefs, please tell us about your case. We will try to help.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former CEO of the oil company Yukos, was sentenced to a prison term in 2005 for fraud and tax evasion. In December 2013, after several more controversial convictions, he went free, following a pardon from Vladimir Putin. Khodorkovsky was considered by many to be a political prisoner.

Alexei Navalny heads the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization that investigates and reveals fraud committed by Russian politicians. He is also the head of the Party of Progress and ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013, nearly forcing a runoff with the incumbent candidate. Navalny has been given two suspended sentences for fraud: five years for a case involving the Kirov forest, and three-and-a-half years in connection with the company Yves Rocher. His brother, Oleg Navalny, was a co-defendant in the Yves Rocher trial and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail. Oleg Navalny is currently serving his prison sentence.

On August 26, a Russian military court sentenced Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov to 20 years in a high-security prison on charges of planning a terrorist attack in Crimea. Sentsov’s co-defendant, Alexander Kolchenko, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Sentsov, who is known as a pro-Ukrainian activist, denies all charges made against him and claims that the case is “politically motivated and falsified.” In the past year and a half, about 10 other Ukrainians have been detained in Russia on various charges, from terrorism to espionage. This includes Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who is facing murder charges. Savchenko has been on several hunger strikes throughout her trial, and her case has also attracted international attention.

For more on this issue, see Russia’s growing number of political prisoners: ‘OVD-Info’ reports on rising levels of repression