Mikhail Khodorkovsky HARDtalk

Berlin hotel, reunited with his family. He reflects on his past,

present and future. Welcome to a special edition of HARDtalk from

Berlin. My guest and a year 's Mikhail Khordovsky. For ten years,

he was Russia's most famous prisoner. The former oil tycoon who

fell out with President Putin. Days ago, he was pardoned and released.

Now he is staying in a Berlin hotel, reunited with his family. Mikhail

Khordovsky has agreed to sit down with me and reflect on his past,

present and future. Mikhail Khordovsky, welcome to HARDtalk. You

have had an extra very few days, from a prison cell in a remote

corner of Russia, to this luxury hotel in Berlin. How would you

describe your state of mind? If I were to ask you to pick out the

most powerful moment in the last three or four days, what would it

be? I am just wondering about private

moments. What was it like, for example, meeting your four-year-old

granddaughter for the first time. A girl who was born while you were a

prisoner, who you have never seen, and who you have meant invalid. --

met in Berlin. In 2010, at the time of your second

trial, you said, I have no wish to die in jail, but if that is what is

needed I have no hesitation. Did you come to a point where you thought

you might not get out? Was there ever a time when you

actually wanted to end it all? You thought you might try to end it all?

What about living with the fact that your family was going through agony

outside? Union, you had some limited contact with them. You knew what

your time in prison was putting them through.

World output about your release. -- we will now talk about your release.

You say it came as a huge surprise. You did not know it would happen.

Rumours are rife in Moscow that some kind of a deal was done between you

and Vladimir Putin, a deal that involved you saying you would not

cause political problems, she would not go back to Russia. Was there a

deal? Here is where I get confused. In the

last few days you have said, and this is a quote, that you want to be

a symbol for the power of civil society to push the system towards

release of political prisoners. You want to play a role in civil

society. You have also said that you do not want to play a political

role, to play the political game for power. How can you push for reform

of the present system, for release of political prisoners, without

being political? You have made it plain you not seek

political power for yourself. What about the need to make as much

political noise as possible, to put pressure on Vladimir Putin. They

would give you the example of the woman campaigners from Pussy Riot.

Both of whom have been released in the amnesty. They came out of prison

saying that the amnesty was a sham, the PR stunt, one of them came out

shouting, Russia without Putin. They are determined to continue their

political activism and they are anti- Vladimir Putin campaign for

what they see as justice. You prepared to make a big noise? -- are

you. To be clear about what is happening

right now, you have been released, the Pussy Riot campaigners have been

released, to you believe that this represents a significant shift in

the Vladimir Putin's attitude to dissent and opposition, or is this,

as the Pussy Riot campaigners said, nothing but a PR stunt?

Let me be blunt. I just wonder whether you feel compromised,

whether you feel frightened, whether you cannot really speak your mind

about Vladimir Putin and his Russia today. For example, your close

friends and business associate remains inside a Russian jail. Is

that the truth? A final thought on President Putin,

it seems to me that for the last ten years you and Vladimir Putin have

been involved in a battle of wills. And you lost ten years of your

freedom, you lost your business empire, and now you are in effect in

its. You have said you can't go back to Russia any time soon because of

the legal problems you still face. Isn't it the truth that in this

battle between you and Putin, Putin has won?

But he has destroyed due. He has destroyed ten years of your life,

your business, your fortune, and you will probably have to live the rest

of your life, certainly the next few years, away from your own country.

Do you think you will ever go back to Russia? Under Vladimir Putin when

he's gone? I want to get onto personal matters. You have a lot of

time to think in prison, and I just wonder, as you sat there, did you

acknowledge to yourself that you have made some serious mistake in

the way you built a business in the 1990s in the early 2000? Became one

of the world's richest men. You had $15 billion worth of wealth, and

much of it was based on sweetheart deals struck with the Yeltsin

government for a massive sell-off of state commodities and riches,

including an oil business. You now prepared to say that what you did

was wrong, was mistaken, you regret it?

What I would like to do now is invite your son to join us. I would

like to reflect on where you personally, and as a family, will go

from here. Pavel was on HARDtalk a few weeks ago. Pavel, thank you for

joining us. I'm sure it is a very good feeling to be able to sit next

to your father in a HARDtalk interview. It is very surreal. I

spoke to you two months ago, and at one point you seem to me to be very

unsure if your father was going to be released in 2014, or if there

will be a third trial, and he might be stuck inside a Russian prison for

an awful long time. Why do you think your father was released? Well, we

can talk about all sorts of imagebuilding factors, and they are

certainly true. Russia needs to improve its image abroad, it needs

to get the most out of the upcoming Olympic Games, and ahead of the

presidency of the G8, it needs to put itself out there. The

presidential pardon of my father helps. You did jeopardise your

family, and as you have said you built up a huge debt. A huge debt to

your family that you say you now want to repay. How can you repay

that debt? You said to me, because you wrote

letters and exchanges, and telephoned your father, he said, I

believe the experiences of the last ten years have made him a much more

sensitive, emotional person. Before imprisonment he was ruthless as a

business leader, he ignored emotions. Now that you have had time

with him, is that really true? Has he really changed? First of all, I

should say that my father physically didn't change at all. I saw the man

ten years ago in person, and of course, even though I looked at all

the media that was available, it still didn't really count. So I

expected to see a different man, and that is really astonishing that this

is a dad that I remember from ten years ago. I want to put that to

you. Do you think you have changed? Has this ten years fundamentally

changed in? In what way? A final thought to you about your

future. There are people in Russia who say, whatever you say today

about not playing a political role, in the end you are the one man with

the experience, the main recognition, the political leverage,

to challenge Vladimir Putin and to change Russia. Why don't you do

that? But you will fight for that? Mikhail

Khodorkovsky, and Pavel Khodorkovsky, thank you very much

for being on HARDtalk. The very stormy weather that we have

had during Monday has brought some trees down in different parts of the

country, and caused power outages as well. We could see more of