Monday, August 02, 2004

Is Russia the Next Zimbabwe? - Putin's crusade against Yukos could be economic suicide. By Kim?Iskyan: "In April 2003, Khodorkovsky and Roman Abramovich, a fellow oligarch who owned Sibneft, another large Russian oil producer, agreed to merge their companies. YukosSibneft would have been the world's fourth-largest oil company, accounting for more than 20 percent of Russia's total oil exports to outside the former Soviet Union. 'With Russia still very dependent on export of petroleum to fill state coffers, allowing one person?not a friend of the Kremlin?to control such a large swath of the oil sector was deemed a national security risk,' said Peter Lavelle, an analyst of the Russian political scene"

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