BERLIN, April 12 (Reuters) - Europe's closer ties with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weaken the cause of democracy in Russia, a former oil magnate imprisoned by Putin's government said in a newspaper interview.
"The ‘realpolitik’ often practiced by the European political elites has disappointed many dedicated people in Russia and shattered the belief in the sincerity of the values propagated by the West," Putin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in an interview on Tuesday with German daily Die Welt.
Khodorkovsky, in jail since 2003, was sentenced in December to remain in prison until 2017 after what senior European officials suspected was a politically motivated trial.
Once Russia’s richest man and head of the now defunct Yukos oil company, he was in the final year of an eight-year prison term imposed after a politically charged fraud and tax evasion trial that marked one of the defining acts of Putin’s 2000-2008 presidency.
Khodorkovsky compared Putin with Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, saying both interpreted judicial independence the same way, although he made a distinction in the case of President Dmitry Medvedev.
"Medvedev has a democratic disposition and he wants to continue with the reforms. But it is much too little, simply to wish for reforms — one has to breathe life into them," the former oil tycoon said, responding to questions sent by the newspaper to his team of lawyers.
"Naturally there is a better alternative to Putinism, which can be understood as a gentle totalitarianism, an economic dependency on resources and an archaic bureaucracy."
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