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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The Russian potato is a hot potato politically for President Vladimir Putin. Much hotter than Alexei Navalny, and for a genuine, homegrown reason. The Russian potato harvest suffered its worst fall last year since 2010. And the political chips will fall just as they did before – the public approval rating for […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On the subject of oligarchy and the treasure storehouses which oligarchs build for themselves, Alexei Navalny reveals that he’s following a US and NATO script: this takes no account of how President Vladimir Putin rules Russia, or the choice most Russians believe is the preferred alternative to Putin – that’s rule […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with US Government officials are protecting some of the largest Russian fraudsters and bank robbers on condition they invest their ill-gotten gains in US real estate, bank accounts, and businesses paying US tax; and also publicly attack the Putin administration for “victimising” them. The latest of these oligarch-sized accused,  Vadim Belyaev (lead […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Abdullah Bozkurt, the leading investigative journalist reporting on Turkey, has been threatened with assassination in Stockholm, Sweden, where he has been living since the July 2016 coup attempt in Istanbul. Bozkurt directs the Nordic Research and Monitoring Network, and publishes the Nordic Monitor.   The threat to kill was issued on […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with A ruling by the Administrative Court of Appeal in Stockholm last week to keep the biochemical contents of Alexei Navalny’s blood secret has created new evidence for Russian prosecutors in Moscow that Navalny has actively collaborated with foreign governments to fabricate the  allegation that President Vladimir Putin attempted to kill him […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with How they are hanging is not a question usually asked of the President of the United States in the Oval Office, unless you are an intimate friend of his, or an interior decorator on the make. There are far fewer of the former than of the latter, so whenever a president […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Alexei Navalny would have suffered from dramatic cholinesterase inhibition effects from the combination of drugs he took before his collapse and hospitalisation in Omsk on August 20, and before these drugs were detected in his blood and urine on his admission to the Charité – Universitätsmedizin in Berlin on August 22. […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with “Wherefore, by their fruits”, according to the Gospel writer’s version of the well-known warning, “ye shall know them”. In the attack on the website which occurred over last evening, it is wherefore by their pigeon fruit that we have worked out who the birds were,  and what they intended.

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Alexei Navalny believes he is throwing down a gauntlet for the Kremlin either to arrest him when he returns to Moscow from Berlin on Sunday, or to allow him to walk freely out of the airport. Either way, from behind bars as a political prisoner or from his Moscow film studio […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The German laboratory test results for Alexei Navalny, published by a group of doctors at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin last month, reveal a surprising number of medical  symptoms, but they are not those of  Novichok nerve agent poisoning as Navalny and his supporters in western governments  have alleged. Clinical doctors, […]