Letters | 16 January 2010

Gangster paradise

Sir: Owen Matthews’s article (‘Something rotten in the state of Russia’, 9 January) brilliantly encapsulates and explains the condition of Russia today. But he omits to mention that the subversion of the judicial system and pervasive corruption have been in evidence for a long time, which does raise the question of whether Hermitage capital should have been in this European country at all. The murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and the refusal of the Russians to extradite the chief suspect constituted — unless you are wilfully blind — a good reason to suspect that Russia is run by crooks. The 2005 mock trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos Oil, and his punishment with an eight-year prison sentence for trying to engage in politics, was another clear warning. There are blatant and numerous cases of illegality, such as the bombing of civilians and the razing of Grozny carried out by the Russian military in Chechnya under orders from Putin.