Jailed Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was sentenced to six more years in prison yesterday following a trial seen as payback for his defiance of Vladimir Putin.

Russian president Vladimir Putin warned against political ideas “placed above basic values” as he, for the first time, joined public commemorations on the 70th anniversary of mass killings ordered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

RUSSIA’S intelligence service accused four British diplomats of involvement in a spy ring in which agents allegedly passed secrets through a hi-tech communications system hidden in an innocent-looking stone in a Moscow park.

PRESIDENT Vladimir Putin yesterday agreed to reinstate the Soviet-era red star as the Russian military’s official emblem — in the latest reincarnation of Communist symbols that has sparked fears of a return to the repressive past.