Khodorkovsky’s return to the penal system follows an appeal against his sentence and a second trial in Moscow.
He was sentenced to an additional six years on top of his initial eight year sentence by a Moscow court in December 2010, later reduced by one year. He is now due for release in 2016.
He served the initial part of his first sentence in Russia’s remote Chita region near China and Mongolia, 6,000 km from Moscow.