New Delhi, June 8 -- The courtroom at the Meshchansky district courthouse has heard Mikhail Khodorkovsky's name pronounced in judgment twice before. On Monday, it did so a third time. The Moscow court sentenced the exiled businessman and Kremlin critic to 10 years in a general-regime penal colony on charges of disseminating deliberately false information about Russia's armed forces - a verdict he will almost certainly never serve, and one that Russia's government appears to have issued knowing that.

a provision that reaches into his current work running the anti-war outlet MBKh Media and the Open Russia movement, both of which Russian authorities have designated as extremist or undesirable organizations.

The designation that preceded Mo...