At Thursday’s press conference in the Independent Press Centre Yury Schmidt described, with the permission of his client, things that the defence team avoided discussing before: everyday existence in a Russian prison, the locked doors, the books read, the life and thoughts of Mikhail Khodorkovsky today.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is held in a cell for two, 15 square metres in size. His fellow inmate has served a total of eighteen years but says this is the first time he’s come across such a strict prison.

Their cell is located on a special floor, accommodating no more than eight prisoners. There are at least twenty guards drawn from the ‘Bison’ unit of the Moscow riot police (OMON). In order to reach the building where Khodorkovsky is held you must cross five courtyards and pass through 25 locked steel doors. The lawyers can only get there, accompanied by prison officers.

Khodorkovsky is entitled to a two-hour visit, twice a month. His relatives come once a month (sometimes less often) because he considers that the 6500 km journey is very exhausting for members of his family.

The daily routine

6 am Reveille — An opportunity to read newspapers and periodicals: Khodorkovsky subscribes to about sixty publications. The newspapers are delivered twice a week. Apart from Russian periodicals, he takes the British weekly, The Economist. His interests as a reader cover politics, political studies and philosophy. Among the Russian periodicals he particularly values are ‘Golden Reserve: Debates in Politics and Culture’, ‘Free Thought’, ‘Analytical Messenger’ and ‘Russia in Global Politics’.

8.30 to 9.30 am — Exercise in the closed courtyard. The yard is covered overhead with a mesh net. Once a week there is a trip to the bath-house.

10 am to 6 pm — Khodorkovsky studies the new charges against him. Familiarisation with this documentation takes place in the Chita Region prosecutor’s office, in a small room without windows. An investigator or the escort guards are constantly present. Khodorkovsky is not allowed a calculator when studying the case files.

10 pm Lights out — During the evening Khodorkovsky studies his notes on the case files and reads. During the last nine months at the detention centre he estimates that he has read about one hundred books. For the most part these are historical works, memoirs or philosophical literature.

Saturday and Sunday — Reading and replying to letters. Khodorkovsky receives 15-20 letters a week. His correspondence increases around significant dates. Mikhail Khodorkovsky reads all the letters and manages to answer about one in ten.

Defence attorney Yury Schmidt noted that his client ‘keeps a careful record of all the proposals that those in power have purloined from him and grandly presented as their own ideas.’

Schmidt passed on to journalists one prediction Khodorkovsky had made: ‘He thinks that if oil prices remain high, the regime will survive comfortably until 2015-2017. Then crisis is inevitable. If prices fall, the crisis will come sooner.’

His lawyer emphasised that Mikhail Khodorkovsky wished only the best for Russia. All the projects on which his thoughts are engaged are aimed at improving the Russian economy and ensuring that the interests of all the population are taken into consideration. ‘I would be very unhappy if sanctions of any kind were applied to Russia because of me,’ Schmidt quoted Khodorkovsky as saying.

‘His thoughts are more about the well-being of Russia than his own release. It’s a unique case. I’ve never come across the like before,’ said Schmidt in conclusion.