The fact that the Dec. 15th verdict of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev was delayed until Dec. 27, smack in between both Christmas holidays and the likely date that the majority of journalists and observers are away from Moscow on holiday, is not at all shocking.  Just about everybody close to the case on the ground had said that this would be the likely outcome – which is a precise reenactment of the 2005 verdict.  In fact, over the course of the seven long years of this travesty, we’ve repeatedly seen the prosecutors and politicians exercise a skillful management of the Western media cycle – announcing all sorts of motions, extensions of detentions, and movements of the prisoners late on Friday afternoons, right before a holiday, or otherwise seizing upon moments of distractions to do the dirty work.

None of this is surprising, shocking, or, unfortunately, even very scandalous at this point, as this is the behavior we have been conditioned to expect from this government in its treatment of political cases in the absence of rule of law.

Instead, two things stand out to me.  For one, I find it breathtaking that there is such open willingness on behalf of the leadership to flaunt these violations of the country’s legal system before the world’s eyes in such an embarrassingly public show.  Judging by a quick look around people’s reactions, precisely no one is foolish enough to think that there is any legitimacy behind the verdict delay, and in fact see right through this sophomoric strategy to bury the story and pretend like it’s not happening.  After the drumbeat calling for their release had grown so vociferously loud over the past number of weeks, from rock stars to former EU foreign ministers to a former Monty Python, the government must have known that this delay would be seen for what is was.  Things are a lot different than back in 2005.