Former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has applied for a visa to Switzerland less than a week after being released from decade-long imprisonment in Russia.

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A spokesman for the Swiss Foreign Ministry confirmed Khodorkovsky submitted the request at the Swiss embassy in Berlin, without giving further details.

The 50-year-old, a long-time critic of Russia's President Vladimir Putin, flew to Germany on Friday within hours of being pardoned, where he was set to reunite with his wife Inna and their three children.

"My family is my main treasure and we are together despite the years, kilometres and barbed wire," Russia's one-time richest man has said in one interview from prison.

He said he had seen lots of lonely people in prison and felt "ashamed" because he had a great family.

"In the lottery of fate I won big time," he said, stressing his wife was waiting for him. "I would not be able to exist without her. She is one half of my heart."

On Saturday, Khodorkovsky reunited with his elderly parents, Marina and Boris, and his eldest son Pavel, his child from his first marriage.

Putin shocked Russia last Thursday by announcing he would pardon Khodorkovsky, who was jailed for financial crimes in separate convictions in 2005 and 2010. He had served time in Siberia and the region of Karelia close to the Finnish border and had been due for release in August 2014.

Russian investigators had earlier raised the prospect of a third criminal case against the Kremlin critic.

Khodorkovsky asked for a pardon on humanitarian grounds because his 79-year-old mother suffers from cancer.

‘No revenge’ against Putin

His daughter Anastasia Khodorkovskaya said she was driving and became "hysterical" when she received a text from her mother saying their father would soon be released.

"I stopped at a traffic light and realised I could not go any further," she told opposition magazine The New Times, noting her two brothers Ilya and Gleb were in a state of "quiet shock."

"They have only seen and remember him from within prison walls."

"I do not remember the last time we celebrated the New Year as a family," she added. "When dad was put in jail I was 12."

Khodorkovsky's supporters say the imprisonment was Putin's revenge against the former tycoon who financed the political opposition and openly criticised the Russian strongman.

His Yukos oil firm was broken up and sold off to the state.

Khodorkovsky told reporters in Berlin on Sunday that he could not return to Russia so long as a court order for him to pay $550 million in damages was still in place.

Khodorkovsky said he would not seek revenge against Putin and has pledged to help political prisoners held in Russian jails.

(FRANCE 24 with AP and AFP)

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