$ 160 million. Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his accomplices paid exactly the amount for control of the Yukos oil company in December 1995, despite the fact that the real price of the company at that time was at least $ 6 billion.

For many years, shareholders controlled Yukos from offshore companies, that is, they did not pay taxes in Russia. When the mayor of Nefteyugansk, where the main mining enterprises are located, tried to demand that the owners pay at least something, he was killed. They killed cynically, right on the birthday of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. A present, so to speak. The organizer of the murder, the court recognized the head of the security service of Yukos. It seems that he hardly acted independently.

And now, the Hague court again obliged Russia to pay $ 50 billion to the former shareholders of Yukos. For what? Because they took money out of the country for many years, became billionaires and now live without denying anything to themselves?

Yes, this decision is not final, it can still be appealed several times. That's just the work of lawyers is paid from the state budget, and I believe that many lawyers from among those who represent the interests of Russia, and from among those who work for Yukos shareholders, have grown rich since this case dragged on.

Why did we initially start participating in this trial, thereby recognizing it? There is a European energy charter, on the basis of which accomplices of Khodorkovsky demand money. But we did not ratify it. Therefore, it was much more correct to immediately refuse to participate in this absolutely unrighteous trial. But now it’s too late: having sent our lawyers to The Hague, we have become a side of the matter.

But in general, of course, the position of “enlightened Europeans” cannot but be surprising. They have tax evasion and the withdrawal of money in offshore - serious crimes for which you can go to jail for decades. As the owners of Yukos became rich, it is well known, and they themselves do not hide this very much. All these offshore companies are known, their names appear in court. Tax evasion is also a fact recorded by the Russian courts, and not a single European court has denied this fact.

It turns out, according to them, the European idea: what they can’t do, then here, on our territory, is possible and necessary. Like, the law was not written in Mordor, especially in cases when you can have a lot of money from Mordor, which in Europe will miraculously turn from dirty to very clean and stop smelling of the blood of killed people and the tears of their widows and children.

It seems that colonialism is a thing of the past, but all this is very similar to Kipling's "burden of a white man", arrogantly looking from the heights of his flight at the unwashed savages swarming in the mud.

Again, if you say something about savages now, you can forever become a handshake in Europe and America because of racism. And about Russian you can write any nonsense - this is not Nazism, no, no.

In Europe, they love to create a variety of international courts and judge each other, as well as those whom they want: for example, a court in the former Yugoslavia, in which Croats and Bosnians were acquitted even for the most serious crimes, and Serbs who defended their country and their people were sentenced to long terms.

It is obvious that if anyone is to be judged for war crimes, it’s the United States for their documented atrocities in different countries of the world, from Vietnam to Syria.

There is only one small but: these lights of democracy wanted to spit on all decisions of international courts. They do not recognize them and are not going to recognize them. On the contrary, the United States regularly demands the extradition of citizens of other countries on the basis of violation of American laws.

So let's, following the same democratic line, take the best from America. Without speculation and compromise, we will prescribe in the Constitution the primacy of national law, once and for all rid of the colonial heritage of the 1990s. Moreover, extraterritoriality should be introduced into Russian law so that anyone who violates Russian laws, even in Greenland, even in New Zealand, will be punished.

Well, of course, it is time to stop participating in the courts with Yukos shareholders and to institute criminal proceedings against them all, to demand their extradition, since they don’t understand in a good way.

The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.