Andy Young over at Siberian Light has an interesting post about the Khodorkovsky open letter.

I can?t quite decide what to make of his critique of liberalism. It is obviously an attempt to destroy the last vestiges of liberalism in Russia (although, lets face it, that wouldn?t take much at this stage). But is he going to follow this up and throw himself fully behind Putin, and argue that stability is the only way to go? Or is he trying to lay the groundwork so that he can be the undisputed leader of a phoenix-like liberal resurgence in Russia? He does, after all, lay out pretty bluntly that he sees a political future for himself?

Andy has also started posting on the Central Asian Blog “The Argus” (he gets around a bit does our Andy) which as he points out has some pretty up to date info on places like Uzbekistan. Andy’s focus is on the impact of ‘external agents’ in Central Asia and the Caucasus: not least amongst these Andy’s very own ‘beloved’ EU:

Chris Patten, the EU’s Commissioner for External Relations (kind of like a foreign minster) visited Central Asia last week. And why? Well one reason, of couse, is that the EU would like a slice of lovely Central Asian oil pie…