All in all, the Prosecutor-General’s office seems to have read The Economist.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s article is given a proper critique

. . . He [Khodorkovsky] is steadily becoming a public figure and an authoritative intellectual whose sphere of interests goes far beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. Khodorkovsky has become the first of the national élite to attempt to think in strategic terms far beyond the framework of yearly budgets and presidential periods of office. And that inspires optimism. It constitutes a real search for a national idea. It’s only unfortunate that the sole person concerned with the country’s future has been sent by that country to a place which makes it extremely hard to think strategically. (Boris Popov, Novye izvestia, 27.11.2006).

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s article is compared to Vladislav Surkov’s

. . . One works in the Kremlin as deputy head of the presidential administration, the other sews mittens in Krasnokamensk. Surkov writes by and large about the country’s future; Khodorkovsky about the world’s. Khodorkovsky is convinced that ‘the year 2007 will become a watershed in the contemporary history of mankind’. China will take centre-stage while ‘the US, Western Europe and Russia will begin to feel themselves the economic hostages of the People’s Republic’. Though Surkov believes that ‘today’s power is challengeable and tomorrow’s questionable’, he speaks about reaching rather ambitious goals - ‘paving Russia’s future path to the top, where the community of creative nations makes history. . .’
Though work in this direction is pretty uphill. (Vladimir Rudakov, Profil, 27.11.2006)

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s article is also compared to Vladimir Putin’s

. . . He [Khodorkovsky], that’s to say, agrees with Surkov, his former subordinate in Menatep, that the country can be saved by an orientation to the West and by ‘concentrating on the intellectual components of the consumer basket’. In the run-up to the European summit, Vladimir Putin published an article of his own - ‘There’s nothing about Russia that Europe should be afraid of’ - in the British paper The Financial Times. He reassured his audience that Russia, in both its spirit and its historical and cultural traditions, is a natural member of ‘the European family’. . . The unanimous conclusion reached by all three authors of such widely different articles can only convince the reader that ‘the idea of intellectual consolidation in Europe unites citizens from the heart of Moscow and the EU as partners and allies’ - as the President wrote in the last paragraph of his article. (Shamil Idiatullin, Kommersant-Vlast, 27.11.2006)

Only the Prosecutor-General’s office seems to have compared Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s article to the Criminal Code

It was only after the publication in The Economist, at any rate, that the Prosecutor-General’s office become increasingly interested in bringing fresh charges against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev

1) The Prosecutor-General’s office of the Russian Federation prolongs until March, 2007 the period of investigation into a new criminal case against Yukos’s former executives. The period of investigation into a new criminal case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev has been extended more than once - most recently on December 2, when it was extended for a further three months. ‘No charges have been filed. We have in fact received no further information, so it would be premature to go into details’, Evgeny Baru, Platon Lebedev’s lawyer, told Interfax news agency on December 8. ‘We still don’t know what political direction it may take or who will carry it out’, he commented in remarks published in Kommersant on the same day.

2) Salavat Karimov returns from Bashkiria to Moscow (under the banner of the left). Information on the resignation of the first deputy prosecutor of Bashkiria and his return to Moscow was first published in the KP-Ufa newspaper on December 5. The paper suggested that the ‘return of the oligarch-killer’ to the capital might be connected to the retirement of Vladimir Lyseiko from the Prosecutor-General’s Department for the Investigation of Especially Important Cases. Lyseiko investigated the Yukos case alongside Karimov. On December 8, Moscow’s Kommersant paper developed this idea further. In its view, Mr. Karimov was taking up his former position as investigator of especially important cases. Kommersant’s sources linked his return to Yuri Chaika’s urgent need to reorganize the Department for the Investigation of Especially Important Cases after the dismissal of Vladimir Lyseiko, its former head. It’s not clear what cases Salavat Karimov will be investigating. He could, for instance, be made responsible for bringing to court a new case against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, this time suspected of the laundering of money obtained by dishonest means (para. 3, article 174 of the Russian Criminal Code).

3) Chief prosecutor Yuri Chaika makes a reverberating statement ‘I don’t rule out fresh charges in this case if additional evidence warrants it’, he said, according to Interfax news agency on December 6. ‘A criminal case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky is under investigation’, he added.