Mikhail Khodorovsky, once the richest man in Russia, was convicted on Monday of theft and money-laundering—charges, his supporters allege, that stem not from any actual crime but rather Khodorovsky’s funding of Russia’s opposition parties. Khodorovsky and his business partner, Platon Lebedev, have been imprisoned since 2003; the length of their sentence has not been handed down yet, but the Guardian says to look at it as sign as whether security and military veterans around Prime Minister Vladimir Putin or liberals around President Dmitry Medvedev have the upper hand in the Kremlin.
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