As YUKOS is forced into bankruptcy and final destruction by the Kremlin, which is even trying to evict YUKOS chairman Mikhail Khodorkovsky's family onto the street, the Moscow News reports that Germany has fired its first Cold War salvo at Russia, attacking the Kremlin's Neo-Soviet treatment of the YUKOS CEO:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has described the conditions in which one-time Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is being held in a Siberian prison as “unacceptable”, Radio Free Europe reports.Merkel says the German government has demanded Russian authorities respect international standards of human rights.Merkel’s comments came in response to a plea from Germany’s opposition Free Democrats for her to raise Khodorkovsky’s case with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Her letter was released by the Free Democrats and published Thursday in the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.In the letter, Merkel says violations of human rights in the prison worry the German government greatly.Khodorkovsky, the former chief of the now bankrupt oil giant Yukos, is serving an eight-year sentence for fraud in the Krasnokamensk prison colony.Many observers believe he was arrested because he represented a political threat to President Vladimir Putin, a claim denied by the Kremlin.Yukos was declared bankrupt by a Moscow commercial court on August 1.

Meanwhile, even the Russian press is condmning "President" Putin for breaking his promise that Yukos would not be driven into bankruptcy.

Khodorkovsky's wife says "they are trying to break" her husband in the most virulent and pathetic form of Neo-Soviet personal attack.