As reported on yesterday’s news blast, Mikhail Gorbachev has come out in support of Svetlana Bakhmina, one of the Yukos prisoners who along with Mikhail Khodorkovsky has spent years illegally imprisoned. Gorbachev has called upon the Russian leadership for her immediate release. Below is the full translation of the interview with izbrannoye.ru. Mikhail Gorbachev – for pardon for Bakhmina The president of the USSR in an interview with editor-in-chief of the internet-newspaper “Izbrannoye” Lyudmila Telen highly assessed the civic initiative of the internet-community, which is gathering signatures under an Appeal to Dmitry Medvedev with a request to pardon YUKOS ex-lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina. Mikhail Gorbachev, in part, said: “Svetlana Bakhmina has already completed the greater part of her term. She has, to the best of my knowledge, two little boys and she’s pregnant besides, the press writes, she’s to give birth in December. Why hold her behind bars? Methinks, president of Russia Dmitry Anatolievich Medvedev in this situation can make use of his right to a pardon. I would welcome this.”