A Russian magazine will give Mikhail Khodorkovsky a literary award for his correspondence with a Russian Booker Prize winning author, the jailed Yukos founder's lawyer said on Tuesday.
Znamya published a series of letters between Khodorkovsky and Lyudmila Ulitskaya in its November 2009 issue. The annual prize, which the literary journal has been awarding for more than 20 years, will be presented at a ceremony in Moscow on Wednesday.
"For obvious reasons Mikhail [Khodorkovsky] will not attend the ceremony," Natalya Terekhova said. "His daughter Anastasia Khodorkovsky and lawyer Yury Shmidt will receive the award for him."
Khodorkovsky was sentenced to eight years in prison for fraud and tax evasion in 2005. He has consistently denied all charges against him, saying he was punished for supporting the tiny pro-Western political opposition. He claims the liquidation of his oil company Yukos was engineered by corrupt government officials aiming to seize lucrative oil assets.
"We thought it was a very serious, a very interesting op-ed piece," Natalya Ivanova, Znamya first deputy chief editor, told RIA Novosti.
The Znamya monthly literature magazine has been published since 1931.
MOSCOW, January 12 (RIA Novosti)
