Many Russia watchers were likely surprised to wake up this morning to read the news that Russia’s highest court has struck down the 2003 arrest of Platon Lebedev, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s business partner at Yukos, as a groundless, illegal act by the police.  This decision from the Presidium of Russia’s Supreme Court stems from a 2007 ruling from the European Court of Human Rights, which they are actually bound by treaty to uphold.

Some reports are calling the decision “rare,” or “breakthrough,” but others are quick to tone down the expectations.  Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Lebedev’s lawyer Elena Lipster points out “‘They’re fulfilling their obligations as written in the law, and with an 18-month delay. (…) Nothing extraordinary happened.“

Lipster has a point, in that the prosecutors are already gloating that this won’t mean that Platon Lebedev, who has suffered repeated health issues while in detention, will be set free anytime soon.  The reason for this is that the second trial is based on an allegedly “new” set of charges, which is in fact a cut and pasted version of the first set of trials with a few more impossible invented crimes thrown in (you wouldn’t believe how much cutting and pasting happens – judicial decisions in Russia often carry the exact same typos as the prosecutor’s submissions).