Russia: The Russian president, Mr Vladimir Putin, tried to soothe jittery investors and diplomatic anger over the investigation into Yukos yesterday, insisting that the crackdown on the oil firm and the arrest of its chief did not spell a return to the strong-arm state control of the Soviet Union, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Moscow
Last month's arrest on fraud and tax evasion charges of Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Yukos boss and Russia's richest man, sent the nation's stocks plunging and sparked fears that ex-KGB hardliners in the Kremlin were mounting an assault on big business.
"There will be no return to the past," Mr Putin told a gathering of Russia's top tycoons amid increasing international disquiet over the implications of Mr Khodorkovsky's seizure and the freezing of some 40 per cent of shares in Yukos, a firm hailed in the West as Russia's most efficient and transparent.
"In our fragile circumstances... any criminal case gives rise to great caution and alarm," Mr Putin said, in his first meeting with business leaders since special agents seized Mr Khodorkovsky on his private jet in Siberia.
But he offered no prospect of discussions over the fate of Mr Khodorkovsky (40), whose allies say he is being persecuted for daring to fund political parties that oppose the Kremlin and for hinting at presidential ambitions of his own.
Mr Putin, a former KGB agent who has placed many security service veterans in influential political posts, offered a scathing analysis of the activities of Mr Khodorkovsky and Yukos, without once mentioning their names.
"We are getting to the point where whoever pays more to his majesty the bureaucrat gets his way," Mr Putin said of alleged corrupt practices by big businesses, which he accused of "lobbying their interests through government so that their competitors are damaged".
Mr Arkady Volsky, head of the business forum that most Russians call the "Oligarchs' Union", said prosecutors should be careful not to damage a business climate that was improving markedly before Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest.
"We recognise the right of the state to proceed with investigations," Mr Volsky said. "But from the point of view of economic stability these actions can hardly be considered positive."
Mr Putin and his allies have railed against criticism of Russia's handling of the Yukos case from the United States and European Union.
Reinforcing his credentials as a liberal in an increasingly hawkish government, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov yesterday called "intolerable" the "atmosphere of threat" around several cases being compiled against Yukos and its subsidiaries.