It is interesting to watch Rosneft’s fortunes rise as those of Yukos are in freefall. Rosneft’s landmark $60 billion deal with China this week marks a history of cooperation between the two, as it was Chinese banks that loaned Rosneft the $25 billion it needed to finance its takeover of Yukos’ largest production unit in 2005, and clever China was one of the few countries that did not criticise the move.  But as Igor Sechin eagerly announced that new agreements with China could lead to a total deal value of $270 billion, the Kremlin has been taking the persecution of Yukos up a notch.  Things have snowballed since the fleeing of liberal economist Sergei Guriev, who left Russia after being plagued by requests to forward his personal documents and emails to investigators, all supposedly in connection with his role in research work regarding the case against former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which led to he and his associate, Platon Lebedev, being acquitted of some of their charges.  Now two further people connected with the same research report