Russia accuses Mikhail Khodorkovsky of plotting coup

Russian authorities have opened a fresh criminal case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once the country’s richest man and one of the Kremlin’s most prominent critics, for allegedly plotting to overthrow the regime of Vladimir Putin.

The country’s domestic intelligence service (FSB) on Tuesday accused the former Yukos oil tycoon, along with 22 other exiled politicians, activists and businessmen of planning a coup. Khodorkovsky and other alleged “founders” of the group have also been accused of supporting Ukrainian units to seize power by force.

While those targeted have long faced persecution in Russia, the case marks a new stage in the Kremlin’s campaign against its critics and reflects growing concern about the influence of dissidents abroad, despite official claims that the opposition is irrelevant.

Khodorkovsky on Tuesday called the accusations “absurd”, saying they were part of the Kremlin’s attempts to intimidate its opponents.

“Putin is extremely sensitive to the emergence of anti-war democratic Russian representation” abroad, he told the Financial Times. “The Kremlin understands perfectly well that such legitimacy for the Russian opposition could become a very important political factor in the event of . . . a sudden transfer of power.”

Khodorkovsky also faces separate charges of public incitement to terrorism, which carry a potential life sentence if he is extradited and convicted. He spent 10 years in a Siberian prison on fraud charges widely seen as politically motivated. Putin pardoned him and he was exiled in 2013. He currently resides in London.

Former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov are also on the list, as well as opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who was released from a Russian jail last year in a major prisoner swap with the US and European countries.

Other names include Evgeny Chichvarkin, once Russia’s leading electronics retailer, now running a high-end wine shop and a restaurant in London’s Mayfair, and Mikhail Kokorich, who co-founded the Nasdaq-listed Momentus and Swiss-based Destinus aerospace companies.

All those named in the case are linked to the Russian Antiwar Committee, an opposition coalition founded abroad in February 2022, shortly after Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and which was promptly banned at home.

The FSB notes the coalition signed a 2023 “Berlin Declaration” that called for the removal of Russia’s current leadership. It also cites the group’s involvement with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace), a human rights forum representing lawmakers from 46 countries. Russia left the Council of Europe in 2022 as it faced exclusion following its invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier this month, Pace announced the creation of a “platform for dialogue between the assembly and Russian democratic forces in exile”, the most significant step to date towards formal representation abroad for anti-Putin groups. Pace said those involved must be of “the highest moral standing” and meet several conditions, including the recognition of Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.

According to the FSB, Khodorkovsky portrayed this platform as a “constituent assembly for a transitional period” and an alternative to Russia’s state institutions. The agency also alleged the anti-war committee members “fund and recruit members of Ukrainian nationalist armed groups inside Russia” to “use them later to seize power by force”.

In a post on X, Khodorkovsky dismissed the allegations of “recruiting fighters” and “arming the Ukrainian military” as “lies”. “Sorry, but no. Humanitarian aid — yes,” he wrote.