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By John Helmer, Moscow Melchior Wathelet (lead image, left), the Advocate-General of the European Court in Luxembourg, publicly recommended on May 31 that the court should dismiss a challenge to the legality of European Union sanctions by the Russian state oil company Rosneft. Wathelet has a history of secret operations against Moscow. That history ought […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow A week ago, Russia’s leading retailer of shoes, TsentrObuv (“Shoe Center”), was taken to the Moscow Arbitrazh Court by 99 plaintiffs, the largest group of creditors ever recorded against an insolvent business of TsentrObuv’s size and national name recognition. This is only the most recent claim to be filed against TsentrObuv […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Secret negotiations have been under way for some time between high German and Russian officials, to which Chancellor Angela Merkel has been excluded. Warned by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and in a recent coded communication from outgoing President Barack Obama that she must act to save her authority, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow On November 15, 2015, I told you so. “Since the US started the regime dominoes falling in Kiev in February 2014, the Polish regime has already toppled, and the French one is doomed – President Francois Hollande will be defeated by every one of the candidates now running to succeed him, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow In countries where sugar is grown as a consumer staple or for export, the stuff is proverbially blamed for the temptation to exaggerate and to steal. In Madagascar, they say “truth is like sugar cane. Even if you chew it for a long time, it is still sweet.” But in Malawi, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Between August 9 and 12, 1941, taking their battleships in turn to meet in a Canadian bay, US President Franklin Roosevelt (centre, left) and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (centre, right) discussed what to do about their adversaries at the time, Germany and Japan. Roosevelt had whispered, and Churchill later reporting […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow President Barack Obama (lead image, left) and his advisors (right) spent at least a week, and as much as three weeks, planning to send up to 9,000 combat troops into eastern Ukraine, on the border with Russia, following the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 two years ago. The scheme, which […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow The Khotin family are either the cleverest new men on Russia’s billionaires’ row, strutting out with prime commercial real estate and oilfield assets, which will double or triple in value as soon as the war is over and the Russian market for corporate bonds and share listings revives. Or else the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades is holding secret negotiations this week with Victoria Nuland (lead image, right), the US State Department official in charge of Turkey, Ukraine and Russia, on a plan to maintain Turkish military forces in Cyprus under the flag of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Anastasiades has sent […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow European Union officials and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are so determined to wage sanctions war against Russia, they are refusing to obey judgements of the European Court in Luxembourg that sanctions are illegal if they lack reason and evidence.