The Putin regime tries to appease the opposition

“Nothing has changed. You cannot call what just happened elections.”
Alexei Navalny

Vladimir Putin, the "winner" of Russia´s presidential "election" is desperately trying to appease the growing number of critics against his criminal rule; Today he authorized the current puppet president Medvedev to ask the prosecuter general to study the legality of the criminal cases against the jailed former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia´s most wellknown political prisoner.

With Putin and the opposition on collision course, the Kremlin issued a statement that could be intended to take the sting out of the protests which began over alleged fraud in a parliamentary poll on December 4 and increasingly target Putin.
Medvedev, who will stay in office until early May and is expected to swap jobs with Putin, told the prosecutor general to study the legality of 32 criminal cases including the jailing of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Khodorkovsky, who headed what was Russia’s biggest oil company, Yukos, and was once the country’s richest man, was arrested in 2003 and jailed on tax evasion and fraud charges after showing political ambitions and falling out with Putin.
The Kremlin said Medvedev had also told the justice minister to explain why Russia had refused to register a liberal opposition group, PARNAS, which has been barred from elections.
The order followed a meeting last month at which opposition leaders handed Medvedev a list of people they regard as political prisoners and called for political reforms.
Medvedev’s initiatives “have only one goal: To at least somehow lower the scale of dismay and protest that continues to surge in society,” Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

Zyuganov is of course right. And one thing is certain: The growing opposition against the Putin regime will not take the puppet president´s initiatives seriously.