Yury Schmidt on the necessity of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s hunger strike.

Yury Schmidt: I am convinced that the haste with which prison officials improved Vasily Aleksanyan’s living conditions in the detention centre is connected with Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s hunger strike. They are incapable of action when it’s a matter of a man’s health and life but now the system is beginning to twitch and feel nervous. It’s a rather unpleasant for them to observe because their ‘improvements’ are just demonstrative. But it’s better than nothing. The most important thing is to save Vasily. We have to manage to save him.