A Groundswell of Support for Svetlana Bakhmina

This weekend the Washington Post carried a story about the rapidly growing base of support to free the pregnant Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina, whom we’ve blogged about many times.  What started with one open letter to President Dmitry Medvedev has snowballed into a full-throated campaign, which the Post is reporting will become very hard for the Kremlin to ignore:  “By issuing a pardon, Medvedev could enhance the liberal image he has tried to foster since taking office in May. But doing so would almost certainly require the acquiescence of his predecessor and patron, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who remains the dominant figure in the Kremlin and oversaw the campaign against Khodorkovsky and his giant oil firm, Yukos.”