Yukos

(Newser) - Vladimir Putin has insisted for years that Russia made a colossal mistake by privatizing the nation's giant reserves of oil, gas, and other natural resources after the fall of the Soviet Union. The president-turned-prime minister has made muscular efforts to renationalize those industries—most notoriously the Yukos oil company, whose...

(Newser) - A grassroots effort to pardon a convicted lawyer could allow Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to bolster the liberal image he's worked to create, but to issue the reprieve he must stand up to Vladimir Putin. Svetlana Bakhmina was arrested during one of Putin’s crackdowns on corruption at state oil...

(Newser) - A Russian court has rejected Mikhail Khodorkovsky's request for parole on Friday, ordering the jailed oil tycoon to serve out the remainder of his sentence in a ruling his lawyer called politically motivated. Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos oil company and once Russia's richest man, was sentenced to 8...