Russian prosecutors want probe of Khodorkovsky on 'regime change' call
Russian prosecutors on Thursday demanded an investigation into Kremlin critic and former oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky for allegedly calling for the overthrow of the authorities under President Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to journalists in Moscow Wednesday via videolink from London, where he currently lives in exile, Khodorkovsky delivered a damning summary of President Vladimir Putin's rule and said "revolution" was inevitable.
"Due to the alleged absence in the country of honest elections and other legal mechanisms to change the authorities, Khodorkovsky called for the carrying out of a revolution as the only and necessary way to change the regime," Russia's general prosecutor's office said calling for investigators to launch a probe.
"These actions by Khodorkovsky appear extremist and demand legal checks."
The former oil tycoon spent a decade in prison in Russia on tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement charges he said were politically motivated before being suddenly pardoned by Putin in 2013.
He flew out of the country to be with his ill mother and currently resides in London.
Despite initially telling Putin that he would not get involved in politics, Khodorkovsky has become increasingly vocal since his mother's death last year.
Meanwhile investigators this week summoned him for questioning as part of a fresh probe into a 1998 murder case and announced that he would be charged on Friday.
Khodorkovsky has claimed that the new probe into the murder of a Siberian mayor, for which his former Yukos security chief is already serving a life term, was ordered personally by Putin.