By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with There has been breaking news since the podcasts with Dimitri Lascaris and Nima Alkhorshid analysing the telephone agreement on Russian diesel shipments to the US between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump. The diesel dealmaking had been under way for at least three weeks before the terms reached Putin and […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 11th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The telephone call which President Donald Trump has been trying to make to President Vladimir Putin since the morning of October 7, and which the Kremlin spokesman refused to confirm each day since,  was such a surprise when it happened on Friday evening, the Kremlin kept it secret from the Russian […]

by Editor - Friday, October 9th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Not so long ago, godfearing Russians believed that if they saw a coin lying on the footpath, they should step over it and not look back because it would be bad luck to pick it up. This was not a primitive superstition. It is a rational calculation, my wife Tatiana explained, […]

by Editor - Friday, October 9th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with When the time of your labour is converted into the profit of the capital which employs you, you belong to the working class. You don’t get time off for vacation. No money. All Russians know this because it was one of the foundation ideas of the communist party state known as […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 7th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In the memory of nations, a very special curse is reserved for the ruler who wanted peace not war;   but was trapped by his enemies, not only into fighting on his enemies’ terms and timetable, but also into losing the war, and then losing the verdict of history of who was […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 6th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In the long history of political thinking in the world, the great Russian contributions have been to the recognition of human oppression and the mind required to fight it. Bakunin, Kropotkin, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin: these names are no longer absent from Moscow bookshop shelves, but their lessons are not taught in […]

by Editor - Saturday, October 3rd, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It’s not surprising when JP Morgan, the largest bank in the US, and the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) under Elvira Nabiullina agree on the future and what’s to be done to get there profitably. However, when JP Morgan’s commodities research team – composed of three Russian émigrés to the US […]

by Editor - Saturday, October 3rd, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The 73-year old President Xi Jinping, and 80-year old President Donald Trump said too much to each other in Washington last week. Russian President Vladimir Putin, turning 74 next week, left several things unsaid but meant. Whose voice is of the stronger man? According to Trump, Xi, “looks strong, vibrant, and […]

by Editor - Wednesday, September 30th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with An international  platform for national upstarts to upstage each other – trained roosters clawing at each other in a cockpit surrounded by money bettors. This comes every September when the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) holds what it calls High-Level Week and the General Debate. Lame ducks can pretend to be […]

by Editor - Friday, September 25th, 2026
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Greenland is to be the newest US and NATO drone and missile launcher against Russia. According to the preamble of the agreement with Denmark and the Prime Minister of Greenland, signed by President Donald Trump on Tuesday (September 22), Russia is now an outsider in the Arctic region ruled by the […]

by Editor - Thursday, September 24th, 2026
No Comments »