- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Russian dockers at St Petersburg and Tuapse are threatening to strike unless the stevedore and port companies employing them accept inflation indexation of their salaries, which is provided by Russia’s labour law, but is not included in their current work contracts. The threat is aimed at Russia’s richest individual, the […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow The treasure cave which the legendary Ali Baba found is not known to have had a back-door. Otherwise, when it happened that Ali’s greedy brother Qassim forgot the ‘Open Sesame!’ for the entrance, he’d have been able to safely escape the arrival of the forty thieves. Instead, Qassim was discovered, […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow On Thursday evening in Conakry, the capital of the west African republic of Guinea, presidential advisor Mamadou Conde was dismissed, after he was found to have been involved in a plan to sign over bauxite concession rights to the Russian aluminium monopoly Rusal, and arrange for acting Guinean President Sekouba […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Sergei Pugachev, the owner of Northern Shipyard and Baltic Plant, two leading St. Petersburg yards, is closing a deal to sell the properties to the state, following pressure from creditors on Pugachev’s holding, United Industrial Corporation (OPB), and its associated bank, International Industrial Bank (IIB).

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow A bold move by two of Russia’s largest companies to fly General Sékouba Konaté, the acting head of the Guinean state in Conakry, to a rendezvous at the Kremlin with President Dmitri Medvedev has failed after a blaze of publicity caused the general to get cold feet.

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow In cockfighting there is a hard and fast rule – if your bird won’t fight, no matter how hard you push it, you forfeit the contest, and bets on the other bird must be paid. When it comes to fighting and hiding, Alexei Mordashov, the Russian steelmaker, appears to have […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

The Moscow police disclosed this week that they have decided not to investigate Alfa-Inform, a Moscow security agency, after an individual describing himself as an employee of the company made a telephone threat to put John Helmer in a wheel-chair unless he removed documents relating to Alfa-Inform and Rusal from this website.

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow The Evraz steel group, the large Russian steel group owned by Roman Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, is negotiating an undertaking to build a new steel rolling-mill in Kazakhstan, according to an announcement by the Kazakh deputy minister of industry, Berik Kamaliev.

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow Russian wheat exporters are increasingly confident of beating US wheat imports in the Egyptian import market after a new deal for 180,000 tonnes of Russian grain, priced at $178.50 per tonne, was announced this week in Cairo, and confirmed by grain trade sources in Moscow. The sale undercuts the US […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer in Moscow O dear! Noddy can’t make the loop the loop. After his last adventure in the jungles of northeastern Guinea, Noddy found that he still owed so much money to his bankers, he wasn’t allowed to make big-ticket plane rides without their permission.