By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On September 3 President Donald Trump accused Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un of “conspir[ing] against the United States of America”.  

Four days later on September 7, when asked by a reporter “Mr. President! Are you ready, are you ready to enter the second phase — Are you ready to enter the second phase of sanctions against Russia or punishing Putin”, Trump replied: “Yeah, I am.”  

Trump then promised to telephone Putin “over the next couple of days”, adding that this week at the White House “certain European leaders, are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday and, uh, individually. And I think we’re gonna get that settled. I think we’re gonna get it settled.”

By the start of Wednesday there has been no telephone call to Putin, and no European leaders have appeared in Washington to talk to Trump. Instead, Trump dialled into a conference call with EU leaders to announce he would join the European Union (EU) in a 100% penalty tariff on India and China for buying Russian oil on condition the EU moved first. As Trump was threatening, his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was meeting an EU delegation to determine if the EU can follow through over opposition from Hungary, Slovakia and other member states.

“We’re ready to go, ready to go right now, but we’re only going to do this if our European partners step up with us,” a US Treasury official briefed the Financial Times. “The president came on this morning and his view is that the obvious approach here is, let’s all put on dramatic tariffs  and keep the tariffs on until the Chinese agree to stop buying the oil. There really aren’t many other places that oil can go.” A second US official told the Japanese-owned propaganda platform against China: “Washington was prepared to mirror any tariffs on China and India imposed by the EU, potentially leading to a further increase in US levies on imports from both countries.” 

There was no corroboration of EU agreement on the US terms from David O’Sullivan, the EU sanctions official who led the European delegation at the US Treasury. US Treasury Secretary  Bessent was threatening in principle,  evasive in practice after meeting O’Sullivan. “The United States and European Union are aligned on the importance of ending the war in Ukraine,” Bessent tweeted.  “All options remain on the table as part of @POTUS’ strategy to support peace negotiations. Business as usual has not worked. We are willing to take strong measures against Russia, but our European partners must fully join us in this to be successful. I made this clear today when meeting with @EU_Commission Sanctions Envoy David O’Sullivan.”

The Kremlin responded that “this unprecedented number of sanctions that have been imposed against our country over the past four years has had no effect…no sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change this stalwart position.”  

Putin had told reporters in Beijing on September 3 he is waiting for the commitment of the Trump administration “to find a solution, not just to issue appeals…We will see how it goes from here. If not, we will have to achieve the tasks set before us by military means.”  He then added in Vladivostok on September 5: “We have an open dialogue with President Trump. We have agreed to call each other, if need be, and talk. He knows that I am open to such talks, as well as he is – I know it. However, so far, based on the results of these consultations in Europe, we have not had any discussions.”  

Putin acknowledged also: “Regarding possible military contingents in Ukraine. This is one of the basic reasons for dragging Ukraine into NATO. So, if any troops appear there, especially now, during combat operations, we will deem them legitimate targets for destruction.  And if any decisions leading to peace, a lasting peace, are achieved, then I will not see the sense of their deployment in Ukraine, that’s it. If agreements are achieved, then no one should doubt that Russia will execute them in full. We will observe the security guarantees, which, of course, would be drafted both for Russia and Ukraine. And I will say it again: Russia will observe these agreements. Anyway, nobody has ever discussed it with us seriously, that’s that.”  

While Trump and Putin wait on each other, Putin and Xi appear to have agreed to begin state to state financing of the two countries’ energy trade, bypassing US and EU sanctions on Russian and international banks,  and replacing US dollar pricing and payment systems for their oil and gas trade. The Tianjin Declaration of last week, the 25-page communiqué of the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) summit meeting chaired by Xi, had camouflaged the new details in a general commitment to “emphasize the important role of cooperation in the financial sphere in promoting economic growth in the SCO area”. Also, “given the instability in international energy markets, member states noted the importance of strengthening cooperation, including in the areas of energy security, energy infrastructure protection, promotion of investment cooperation.”  

Agreement by China to the new scheme was leaked to the Financial Times from unidentified Japanese sources. “China is preparing to reopen its domestic bond market to major Russian energy companies, in a shift of policy that reflects deepening diplomatic and economic ties between Beijing and Moscow. Two [Japanese] people familiar with the matter said senior Chinese financial regulators told top Russian energy executives at a late August meeting in China’s southern city of Guangzhou that they would support their companies’ plans to sell renminbi panda bonds. Such borrowing would be the first Russian corporate fundraising in mainland China since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the first Russian debt sold on China’s public onshore market since state aluminium producer Rusal’s panda bond issue raised a total Rmb1.5bn ($210mn) in 2017.”   

In Moscow, the strategic significance of the new Sino-Russian financing plan is acknowledged without fanfare. Read the analysis just published by Vzglyad, the Moscow security analysis platform.   

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by Editor - Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Can film impresarios make profits out of Russia warfighting films that demonize Vladimir Putin?

Navalny the film won an Oscar, a Lola, a Bafta, and more. The size of the audience who have seen the film remains a secret of the producers, but the box office revenues the film has earned over the past three years have been reported as just $107,186.   As Oscar-award winners go, Navalny the film has been a media failure with western audiences, a very big lossmaker for the producers. And so the European warfighting organs are hoping for better earnings from the launch of a film  they calculate has already made more money as a book. This is The Wizard of the Kremlin which in its French edition won a French Academy prize and sold a half-million copies. The author is Giuliano da Empoli.

According to reports from the Venice Film Festival late last month, at its first screening The Wizard of the Kremlin film received “a hugely enthusiastic 10-minute standing ovation” and more than a dozen bravos from an audience which was invited to watch it, not charged. On stage the film’s lead actress, a Swede playing a Russian, reportedly ” wiped away tears as the ovation continued.”  

The BBC is uncertain: “The Wizard of the Kremlin is measured and methodical, so it is unlikely to be a big hit: Baranov might remark that it isn’t gaudy and kitsch enough. But, fictionalised though it might be, it is worth watching if you want to gain some insight into how Putin came to power, and how that power has been maintained.”  The Independent, owned by the Lebedev banking family, was sure the film was too soft. “What is bound to rankle many viewers, however, is the film’s softball portrayal of Putin overall. As shown here, he is no monster. Given the ongoing war in Ukraine, it doesn’t seem like the most propitious moment for a movie like this.”  Variety: “The way Law plays him, Putin is something almost scarier than a monster — a rational tyrant, a man to mess with, or even disagree with, at your peril. He doesn’t start out by coveting power (the powers that be have come to him), but he believes that raw power, from the top, is what the Russian people crave…he perfectly channels Putin’s cold-blooded glare, infusing him with a reptilian charisma. The real Vladimir Putin has a special duality: His eyes look like they want to kill you, his mouth doesn’t move a muscle. And Law nails that.”  

Who will pay money to be told this, again? The French state public company France Télévisions and the Disney corporation are hopeful as the producers of the film, along with the Gaumont company of the Seydoux family.   

But Da Empoli’s book has dropped out of the bookshores because its sale price is less than the cost of displaying it. s. The paperback is down to $2.29, one-tenth pubklisher’s launch price.  Reread this review of the book.  

Asked in Beijing what he thinks of the film, Putin replied to the reporter: “Anastasiya Savinykh: Mr President, if I may, let us stick to the cinema. A film has been released in the West with you as one of the characters. The film is titled “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” Have you seen it? Have they shown you any frames? By the way, British actor Jude Law played you in this film. Have you met? Vladimir Putin: No, I have not seen this film. This is the first time I am hearing about it. I cannot say anything about it, because I have not seen it.”  

Read on, to save yourself the cinema ticket and the book charge.

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by Editor - Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Listen to the groundbreaking discussion with Nima Alkhorshid today.  

The full discussion paper of Vyacheslav Molotov to the Soviet Presidium, elaborating on the draft “General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe” and raising the possibility of the USSR joining NATO was dated March 26, 1954. Read it in full here.  

For comparison, read the two draft treaties on mutual security presented to the US and NATO by the Russian Foreign Ministry on December 21, 2021, here.   For analysis of both treaties at the time, click.  

For the evidence from the declassified US presidential archives of the treasons of Boris Yeltsin and Anatoly Chubais, click to read from 2016;   from 2018;  and from 2020.   

by Editor - Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When you sit down to read, watch,  or listen to  website, blog, Twitter, or podcast on the war against Russia, do you combine it with a glass of your favourite alcohol – or is that what you’d like but it’s forbidden on your jogging track, car, bus,  or train commute?

The answer for you now is Raymond Chandler’s best line from The Long Goodbye (1953): “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.”

Chandler’s other best lines for now are: “we make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk” – this is how to think about President Donald Trump’s MAGA peacemaking. “If you believe in an idea, you don’t own you, it owns you” – that’s the Marxist-Leninist reality that a generation of Russians were educated to forget from 1991 and are having to re-learn today.  And “nothing says goodbye like a bullet” – that’s what President Vladimir Putin meant when he told reporters the other day in Beijing: “if common sense ultimately prevails, an acceptable option for ending this conflict can be agreed upon…We will see how it goes from here. If not, we will have to achieve the tasks set before us by military means.”

According to the most recent surveys of the American podcast audience, more than half listen as a combination of entertainment, lesson, and diversion at the same time – to have something to do when they are doing something else. That’s the big podcast difference from long-read media  – you can read Dances with Bears and drink beer or wine, but you can’t take off your own or someone else’s clothes at the same time.  Only about one in ten US listeners to podcasts do it in the old-fashioned way of desktop or laptop read.  

There’s a hitch, though. Packaging information in podcast form may lead to less short-term comprehension and less long-term memory retention than occurs in reading.  To date, there is research concluding this is true;   and also research that it’s false.  

There also appear to be national, ethnic and racial differences between blog readers and podcast listeners.   While more and more of the global audience is opting for the podcast to replace the website, blog and tweet stream, and spending increasing amounts of time on podcasts at the expense of time reading print,   in the US, the podcast option is preferred by more blacks, Hispanics and Asians than whites.   

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whichever age, ethnic or gender group you belong to, and however you prefer to think, Dances with Bears has come up with a solution for you:  this is to make podcasts with different geographical coordinates, and follow them up with long-read backgrounders on the Dances with Bears website.

There are now four podcasts for you to tune into.

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by Editor - Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The three questions are:

1. Has any politician in the NATO Coalition of the Willing Warfighters against Russia lied more brazenly to win his domestic election than Mark Carney (not counting Vladimir  Zelensky)?

2. Has any politician in the Coalition calculated more mistakenly that spending more on the losing war in Europe would appease and ingratiate President Donald Trump, and relieve his country of Trump’s penalty tariffs?

3. Has any politician in the Coalition benefited more personally and more directly in his bank account from fighting the Russians in the Ukraine and capitulating to Trump (except for Trump himself and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen)?

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by Editor - Monday, September 8th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Novichok is a military weapon, the deadliest chemical warfare agent developed by several armies around the world over the past thirty years,  which hasn’t killed anyone.

Alexei Navalny is a Russian politician who over more than a decade nominated himself to be President Vladimir Putin’s main rival but whom just two percent of Russians have trusted enough to vote for.    

Think of Novichok and Navalny, both of them, as political fictions.

The paradox of their combination is that Navalny’s claim to have been attacked with Novichok failed to persuade Russians to support him against Putin.  Then, after he survived Novichok but died of natural causes, he lost his political value outside Russia just as he had already lost it inside Russia. However, the combination of the two fictions has served the ulterior purpose for which they were designed in Germany. This is why this book is being published for German readers now – now that they are being ruled by a chancellor with a multi-billion Euro plan to rearm Germany in order to fight the old German war against Russia once again.    

This is the conclusion for the time being.

This introduction is to the evidence of years of planning and staging by the Chancellery and the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) to turn the personal medical collapse of Navalny into a public cause of war; that’s to say, preparation for war. It records the accumulation of disinformation and misinformation by the then Chancellor Angela Merkel; the BND chief Bruno Kahl, and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas;  amplified daily by Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert, and compelling the Charité Clinic in Berlin, its doctors and administrators, to falsify the medical evidence until they made the colossal mistake of publishing the clinical test results for Navalny’s bodily liquids and his hair.

Merkel, Kahl, and Maas also compelled the Swedish and French governments, along with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague under US, British and Dutch control, to report their additional testing of Navalny’s liquids as corroborating their campaign against Russia, when their tests did no such thing. The Berlin clinic tests proved their lie.

After a pack of expensively fabricated lies about the Novichok poisoning of Navalny won the Oscar of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in March 2023 for the best non-fiction film of the year, and for the same category also the German Film Academy’s Lola, there should have been little doubt that he can win another Oscar now that he’s dead. But no.

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by Editor - Monday, September 8th, 2025
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On August 24, 1991, Marshal Sergei Fyodorovich Akhromeyev committed suicide. He had returned from his holiday at Sochi responding to the attempted removal of Mikhail Gorbachev from power. According to the reports of the time, he hanged himself in his Kremlin office, leaving behind a note. One version of what it said was: “I cannot live when my fatherland is dying and everything that has been the meaning of my life is crumbling. Age and the life that I have lived give me the right to step out of this life. I struggled until the end.”

by Editor - Sunday, August 24th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

by Editor - Tuesday, August 5th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Listen to today’s discussion with Nima Alkhorshid as we inspect the defences being built now against President Donald Trump’s ultimatums from the Ukraine to Iran, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, India, and China.   

Before we start, though, ask whether there is any evidence in what Trump himself says to show he understands any negotiating terms short of capitulation.

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by Editor - Tuesday, August 5th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Donald Trump had just turned nineteen in June 1965 when he heard on the radio the Rolling Stones sing the song which made them world famous.  “I can’t get no satisfaction,” the song began, and repeated the line, and then repeated more words.   “I can’t get no satisfaction/’Cause I try, and I try, and I try and I try/I can’t get no, I can’t get no.”

Trump’s syntax is the same, the tune he is singing is still no hit.

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by Editor - Tuesday, August 5th, 2025
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