The Kremlin made the announcement after Russians were waiting for his release from a prison camp.
"Guided by humanitarian principles, I decree that Mikhail Borisovich Khodorkovsky ... should be pardoned and freed from any further punishment in the form of imprisonment. This decree comes into force from the day of its signing," said the decree signed by Putin and published by the Kremlin.
Political analysts put the announcement down to Kremlin's bid to improve its dismal rights record and international image ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi inFebruary 2014
After 10 years in prison, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the former chairman of Yukos Oil and once Russia’s richest man, walked free from a penal colony in northern Russia on Friday and flew to Berlin on a private jet.
In a hastily arranged exit, Mikhail B Khodorkovsky was whisked to Berlin hours after Putin, in Moscow, signed a 34-word decree pardoning him of his crimes.
Slightly more than a decade after his arrest by armed agents on an airport tarmac in Siberia, Mr. Khodorkovsky emerged into freedom on another airfield, smiling tightly as a former German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, greeted him and clasped his hand.
German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, right, welcoming Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky at the airport in Berlin-Schoenefeld Friday, Dec. 20, 2013.
Mikhail B Khodorkovsky said he had applied for a pardon more than a month ago, on Nov. 12, and that he was “happy for a favorable decision.”
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