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By John Helmer, Moscow Not since Raisa Gorbacheva revealed that she knew how to use a credit card for shopping and displayed the PhD she had bought, I mean earned, has the wife of a Russian head of state attracted such a display of petit bourgeois chagrin.

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By John Helmer, Moscow The 421-page ruling of UK High Court Justice Andrew Smith, issued on Friday in London, dismisses all charges and claims pursued for the past five years against Dmitry Skarga, former chief executive of Sovcomflot, and Tagir Izmaylov, his counterpart at Novorossiysk Shipping Company (Novoship). The consequences are dramatic for the Russian […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The UK High Court ruled this morning in London that the half-billion dollar fraud claim pursued by state shipping company Sovcomflot and its chief executive Sergei Frank was based on fabrications and lies. Frank was condemned in the ruling, and his witnesses dismissed as dishonest. Former Sovcomflot chief executive Dmitry Skarga […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Many Hindu gods are depicted with multiple arms. This is a pictorial way of illustrating for believers the many qualities which the god is believed to exercise. By assigning many arms, the illustrator was able to demonstrate the many things the deity can pull off at the same time.

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Bible isn’t nice to giants. Goliath goes down to a single stone from a slingshot-tossing boy. And Samson, whom the ancient Hebrews thought was so strong he could lift two mountains and rub them together like lumps of earth, fell for the temptress Delilah; she got him to go to […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Until today, milk, fruit pulp, and flavoured water (aka juice) have not been known to be strategic resources in the Russian Federation. But clever lobbying, or incredible stupidity, has arranged to make them seem so, and thereby create the appearance of compliance with Russia’s competition and anti-monopoly laws – without the […]

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From John Helmer, Moscow LUKoil, the second largest of Russia’s oil producers and exporters, may spend $900 million over the next two years drilling up to 11 offshore probes for oil in the west Atlantic off Ghana and Ivory Coast, a LUKoil source told Business Day yesterday. The number of wells has diminished since LUKoil […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow When there was a Russian steel consumption boom three years ago, the domestic steel business wasn’t open to foreign steelmakers, even if they were prepared to pay premium prices to buy into Russian steel assets. And the Russian steel sector remained just as closed when the crash came, driving most of […]