Det lyder som en scene fra Dostojevskijs «De dødes hus»: en fange nektes medisinsk behandliing fordi myndighetene vil tvinge ham til å komme med falske anklager. Mannen er Vasily Aleksanyan, tidligere en av lederne for Russlands største og mest profitable private selskap. Han lider av aids, og trenger kontinuerlig medisinsk behandling. Men myndighetene stiller som betingelse at han vitner mot Mikhail Khodorkovskij. Det holdt ikke med de åtte årene Khodorkovskij soner i Sibir.

Edward Lucas spør: Er det ikke på tide at vi erkjenner at «Russia is back: rich, powerful and hostile»?

The loudest alarm signal is Russia’s predictable yet mystifying presidential election on March 2. Predictable because everyone knows who will win: Dmitri Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s polite, lawyerly sidekick; mystifying because the meaning of that victory is so unclear. Will Mr Medvedev be a mere figurehead? Will he stand down and allow Mr Putin to return? What does his stint running Russia’s energy giant, Gazprom, one of the world’s most corrupt, incompetent and sinister companies, tell us about his plans for the future? What does his rise mean for the clans of crooks and spooks whose murky feuds have increased so sharply in past months? Once a dead art, Kremlinology is now a lively and useful discipline.

Politics in Russia is a matter of life and death. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, is on prison hunger strike in protest against the ill-treatment of his aide Vasily Aleksanyan. Mr Aleksanyan is confined in a filthy mould-infested cell because he refuses to sign a bogus confession incriminating Mr Khodorkovsky. His judicial torture, including denial of medical care, which has blinded him, has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights. It reads like something from Dostoyevsky, not a factual account of prison conditions in supposedly one of the world’s top eight industrialised democracies.

Why kowtow to brutal, cynical Russia?
We have a new Cold War and we’re losing it. The West must stand up to the Kremlin now