BERLIN: The release of Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky represents a resounding victory for German diplomacy just as the country is reassessing its complex ties with Russia, analysts said yesterday.
Veteran top German diplomat Hans-Dietrich Genscher worked in secret for more than two years to win the release of Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and a political threat to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
With the explicit support of Chancellor Angela Merkel, Genscher, 86, who served as foreign minister for nearly two decades during the Cold War, managed to keep a lid on his dealings even as he held two separate personal meetings with Putin, in Berlin and Moscow, in 2012 and 2013.
Khodorkovsky himself, whisked to Berlin on a German businessman’s private jet on Friday upon his shock release after a decade behind bars, started a news conference on Sunday by thanking Merkel and Genscher for their crucial help, indicating he had “no idea” of Germany’s efforts while he was still in prison.
The Kremlin for its part remained tight-lipped about Berlin’s part in the Khodorkovsky saga. “Merkel will probably talk about her role herself, if there was any,” presidential aide Yury Ushakov told Interfax yesterday.
Merkel had on Friday hailed the success of Germany’s “behind the scenes” negotiations, which German media noted were a low-risk, high-pay-off endeavour.
“Unofficial contacts, such as those of Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton in North Korea or others in Iran or those of Hans-Dietrich Genscher in Russia can always be presented as non-committal talks where there can be an exchange of views but never failure because there is no official pedigree to them,” Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel noted.
“And where there can be no failure, there can be no embarrassment.”
AFP
