On October 25, Mikhail Khodorkovsky--CEO of YUKOS, the largest private company in Russia--was arrested at gunpoint by masked agents of the Russian government on what are widely viewed as politically-motivated charges of tax evasion, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. President Putin has publicly voiced his support for the assault on Khodorkovsky, a critic of the Kremlin.

Does Khodorkovsky’s arrest signal a turn against the free market and civil liberties in post-Soviet Russia? Will this attack on the country’s most successful entrepreneur put an end to Russia’s economic boom? How should the United States balance its concerns about Russian domestic developments with its cooperation in the war on terrorism?

The American Enterprise Institute and the New Atlantic Initiative will present a panel discussion to address these and other questions. Participants will include Anders Åslund, director of the Russian and Eurasian program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Harley Balzer, assistant professor at Georgetown University; Bruce Jackson, president of the Project on Transitional Democracies; and Radek Sikorski, director of the New Atlantic Initiative. Leon Aron, director of Russian studies and resident scholar at AEI, will act as moderator.