:00:00. > :00:13.Berlin hotel, reunited with his family. He reflects on his past,
:00:14. > :00:18.present and future. Welcome to a special edition of HARDtalk from
:00:19. > :00:23.Berlin. My guest and a year 's Mikhail Khordovsky. For ten years,
:00:24. > :00:31.he was Russia's most famous prisoner. The former oil tycoon who
:00:32. > :00:38.fell out with President Putin. Days ago, he was pardoned and released.
:00:39. > :00:43.Now he is staying in a Berlin hotel, reunited with his family. Mikhail
:00:44. > :01:07.Khordovsky has agreed to sit down with me and reflect on his past,
:01:08. > :01:16.present and future. Mikhail Khordovsky, welcome to HARDtalk. You
:01:17. > :01:21.have had an extra very few days, from a prison cell in a remote
:01:22. > :01:23.corner of Russia, to this luxury hotel in Berlin. How would you
:01:24. > :02:16.describe your state of mind? If I were to ask you to pick out the
:02:17. > :02:18.most powerful moment in the last three or four days, what would it
:02:19. > :02:52.be? I am just wondering about private
:02:53. > :03:00.moments. What was it like, for example, meeting your four-year-old
:03:01. > :03:05.granddaughter for the first time. A girl who was born while you were a
:03:06. > :03:09.prisoner, who you have never seen, and who you have meant invalid. --
:03:10. > :03:46.met in Berlin. In 2010, at the time of your second
:03:47. > :03:54.trial, you said, I have no wish to die in jail, but if that is what is
:03:55. > :03:55.needed I have no hesitation. Did you come to a point where you thought
:03:56. > :04:45.you might not get out? Was there ever a time when you
:04:46. > :05:15.actually wanted to end it all? You thought you might try to end it all?
:05:16. > :05:26.What about living with the fact that your family was going through agony
:05:27. > :05:33.outside? Union, you had some limited contact with them. You knew what
:05:34. > :06:14.your time in prison was putting them through.
:06:15. > :06:23.World output about your release. -- we will now talk about your release.
:06:24. > :06:29.You say it came as a huge surprise. You did not know it would happen.
:06:30. > :06:37.Rumours are rife in Moscow that some kind of a deal was done between you
:06:38. > :06:40.and Vladimir Putin, a deal that involved you saying you would not
:06:41. > :06:42.cause political problems, she would not go back to Russia. Was there a
:06:43. > :08:11.deal? Here is where I get confused. In the
:08:12. > :08:17.last few days you have said, and this is a quote, that you want to be
:08:18. > :08:25.a symbol for the power of civil society to push the system towards
:08:26. > :08:30.release of political prisoners. You want to play a role in civil
:08:31. > :08:34.society. You have also said that you do not want to play a political
:08:35. > :08:41.role, to play the political game for power. How can you push for reform
:08:42. > :08:43.of the present system, for release of political prisoners, without
:08:44. > :09:44.being political? You have made it plain you not seek
:09:45. > :09:47.political power for yourself. What about the need to make as much
:09:48. > :09:52.political noise as possible, to put pressure on Vladimir Putin. They
:09:53. > :09:58.would give you the example of the woman campaigners from Pussy Riot.
:09:59. > :10:04.Both of whom have been released in the amnesty. They came out of prison
:10:05. > :10:12.saying that the amnesty was a sham, the PR stunt, one of them came out
:10:13. > :10:17.shouting, Russia without Putin. They are determined to continue their
:10:18. > :10:21.political activism and they are anti- Vladimir Putin campaign for
:10:22. > :10:26.what they see as justice. You prepared to make a big noise? -- are
:10:27. > :11:53.you. To be clear about what is happening
:11:54. > :11:57.right now, you have been released, the Pussy Riot campaigners have been
:11:58. > :12:02.released, to you believe that this represents a significant shift in
:12:03. > :12:09.the Vladimir Putin's attitude to dissent and opposition, or is this,
:12:10. > :12:50.as the Pussy Riot campaigners said, nothing but a PR stunt?
:12:51. > :12:58.Let me be blunt. I just wonder whether you feel compromised,
:12:59. > :13:07.whether you feel frightened, whether you cannot really speak your mind
:13:08. > :13:12.about Vladimir Putin and his Russia today. For example, your close
:13:13. > :13:15.friends and business associate remains inside a Russian jail. Is
:13:16. > :14:28.that the truth? A final thought on President Putin,
:14:29. > :14:31.it seems to me that for the last ten years you and Vladimir Putin have
:14:32. > :14:35.been involved in a battle of wills. And you lost ten years of your
:14:36. > :14:43.freedom, you lost your business empire, and now you are in effect in
:14:44. > :14:48.its. You have said you can't go back to Russia any time soon because of
:14:49. > :14:51.the legal problems you still face. Isn't it the truth that in this
:14:52. > :15:12.battle between you and Putin, Putin has won?
:15:13. > :15:19.But he has destroyed due. He has destroyed ten years of your life,
:15:20. > :15:22.your business, your fortune, and you will probably have to live the rest
:15:23. > :16:38.of your life, certainly the next few years, away from your own country.
:16:39. > :16:58.Do you think you will ever go back to Russia? Under Vladimir Putin when
:16:59. > :17:03.he's gone? I want to get onto personal matters. You have a lot of
:17:04. > :17:07.time to think in prison, and I just wonder, as you sat there, did you
:17:08. > :17:11.acknowledge to yourself that you have made some serious mistake in
:17:12. > :17:21.the way you built a business in the 1990s in the early 2000? Became one
:17:22. > :17:24.of the world's richest men. You had $15 billion worth of wealth, and
:17:25. > :17:31.much of it was based on sweetheart deals struck with the Yeltsin
:17:32. > :17:38.government for a massive sell-off of state commodities and riches,
:17:39. > :17:41.including an oil business. You now prepared to say that what you did
:17:42. > :18:31.was wrong, was mistaken, you regret it?
:18:32. > :18:41.What I would like to do now is invite your son to join us. I would
:18:42. > :18:51.like to reflect on where you personally, and as a family, will go
:18:52. > :18:58.from here. Pavel was on HARDtalk a few weeks ago. Pavel, thank you for
:18:59. > :19:03.joining us. I'm sure it is a very good feeling to be able to sit next
:19:04. > :19:09.to your father in a HARDtalk interview. It is very surreal. I
:19:10. > :19:13.spoke to you two months ago, and at one point you seem to me to be very
:19:14. > :19:18.unsure if your father was going to be released in 2014, or if there
:19:19. > :19:24.will be a third trial, and he might be stuck inside a Russian prison for
:19:25. > :19:33.an awful long time. Why do you think your father was released? Well, we
:19:34. > :19:38.can talk about all sorts of imagebuilding factors, and they are
:19:39. > :19:42.certainly true. Russia needs to improve its image abroad, it needs
:19:43. > :19:52.to get the most out of the upcoming Olympic Games, and ahead of the
:19:53. > :20:00.presidency of the G8, it needs to put itself out there. The
:20:01. > :20:04.presidential pardon of my father helps. You did jeopardise your
:20:05. > :20:11.family, and as you have said you built up a huge debt. A huge debt to
:20:12. > :20:13.your family that you say you now want to repay. How can you repay
:20:14. > :20:48.that debt? You said to me, because you wrote
:20:49. > :20:52.letters and exchanges, and telephoned your father, he said, I
:20:53. > :20:56.believe the experiences of the last ten years have made him a much more
:20:57. > :21:00.sensitive, emotional person. Before imprisonment he was ruthless as a
:21:01. > :21:04.business leader, he ignored emotions. Now that you have had time
:21:05. > :21:10.with him, is that really true? Has he really changed? First of all, I
:21:11. > :21:18.should say that my father physically didn't change at all. I saw the man
:21:19. > :21:22.ten years ago in person, and of course, even though I looked at all
:21:23. > :21:28.the media that was available, it still didn't really count. So I
:21:29. > :21:34.expected to see a different man, and that is really astonishing that this
:21:35. > :21:41.is a dad that I remember from ten years ago. I want to put that to
:21:42. > :21:42.you. Do you think you have changed? Has this ten years fundamentally
:21:43. > :22:34.changed in? In what way? A final thought to you about your
:22:35. > :22:37.future. There are people in Russia who say, whatever you say today
:22:38. > :22:43.about not playing a political role, in the end you are the one man with
:22:44. > :22:51.the experience, the main recognition, the political leverage,
:22:52. > :22:53.to challenge Vladimir Putin and to change Russia. Why don't you do
:22:54. > :23:58.that? But you will fight for that? Mikhail
:23:59. > :23:59.Khodorkovsky, and Pavel Khodorkovsky, thank you very much
:24:00. > :24:24.for being on HARDtalk. The very stormy weather that we have
:24:25. > :24:29.had during Monday has brought some trees down in different parts of the
:24:30. > :24:30.country, and caused power outages as well. We could see more of