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By John Helmer, Moscow Backstage at the Theatre du Chatelet on May 9, 1909, the curtain had come down on Vatslav Nijinsky’s performance of the Polovtsian Dances, an adaptation to Alexander Borodin’s music of the Tatar warrior dance. The Tatars flaunt their prowess, and their alluring slave girls, before their captive, the defeated Prince Igor. […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The International Monetary Fund’s senior officials have known that Stepan Kubiv, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, was removed six years ago for his involvement in a massive bank loss and loan diversion, when Kubiv was in charge of Kredobank, a west Ukrainian bank owned by PKO Bank Polski, the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Last year Russia’s six major steelmakers cut 33,500 jobs from their payrolls, because, they explain, they are struggling to reduce losses and cut bank debt. That amounted to a loss of almost one in ten jobs in the Russian steel sector. At the end of 2013, the headcount of steelworkers was […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is preparing to release Privatbank, the largest commercial bank in Ukraine, from independent tests of its solvency and capital adequacy, and allow a bailout of the bank with Ukrainian public funds, backed by the IMF. The Ukraine mission of the IMF has also revealed this week […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Nudelman is the real name of Victoria Nuland, co-author of the February 21 coup d’etat in Kiev; and author of the four-letter expletive by which she disposed, almost, of Germany’s objections to the war against Russia which has followed. In Yiddish, Nudelman is generally thought to refer to the culinary trade […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Stealth warfare against the Russian economy may be encouraging capital outflows, but for Russians on the home front, glasses are still being raised with a growing volume of sparkling wine or champagne going down the hatch. Abrau-Durso, the only Russian winemaker listed on a public stock exchange, is also going up, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The US Navy’s current Russia containment tactic in the Black Sea has been unable to negotiate refuelling from naval or civilian fuel tankers while under way at sea, and requires port calls for fuel every seven days. The Navy has announced that its missile cruiser, USS Vella Gulf, put into the […]