From Robert Amsterdam's latest in the Huffington Post:

But it is clear to those of us who have watched and listened to Khodorkovsky over these years that his beliefs, spirit and convictions have only deepened. When he first became a political prisoner, he was recognized as a symbol of Russia being on the wrong track: the disappearance of rule of law, corporate raiding and state theft, authoritarian drift, and the Kremlin's first taste of using stolen assets as an energy weapon. Today, after six long years of injustice, he is emerging as an important political voice and a sign of Russian moral conscience.

These statements have been building over past months, most recently highlighted by an article he

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I'm grateful to the commenter John who guided me toward this link for the report sponsored by the Swedish Ministry of Defence on energy security and the North European Gas Pipeline, otherwise known as Nord Stream.  I was a little too hasty and did not see the link in the New York Times story.  One reason I may have missed this one is that it was published in back in 2006 - meaning we would certainly have to add to the quoted number of times (55) that Russia has cut energy supplies to apply political pressure.  At any rate, here is the section from the paper that details the methodology of coercive energy policy.

Russia's Coercive Energy Policy in Aggregated Terms

If these cases are penetrated and put in a wider context, a pattern emerges, namely that the energy lever can

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There's a piece today in the Financial Times about some modest signs that commodity demand may be picking up to help the Ukrainian economy get itself out of the gutter - though the rough times appear to be far from over.  What caught my eye on this article were two interesting facts - that the second gas war between Gazprom and Ukraine caused industrial production to fall by 16% month on month as Kiev diverted its remaining supply to heating people's houses (talk about the energy weapon!).  The other detail was the fact that the IMF was delaying in its delivery of the second tranche of its $16.4 billion loan because of the unending political squabbling between the camps of President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.  Needless to say, they've really got to get their act together, but it ...