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 […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It must be the sea air at Vladivostok that causes temporary clumsiness and misspeaking on the part of President Vladimir Putin (lead image, left) during the carefully orchestrated question-and-answer session of the annual Far Eastern Economic Forum. At the forum in September 2018, asked about British government and media reports […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Tuesday, September 12th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Inoculation against tuberculosis, the official Soviet state policy for almost a century, continues to shield the Russian population with a higher level of immunological resistance than those in Europe and the US who lack the vaccination.  This has also been a well-tested finding in western and Indian medical publications; in India […]

Filed under: Covid-19, DwB by Editor - Monday, April 13th, 2020
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By John Helmer, Moscow Mikhail Abyzov (lead image from 2014) was arrested yesterday on charges of embezzlement and fraud, and is in prison on remand. The case against Abyzov for theft of Rb4 billion ($62 million) from regional electricity companies is the most significant criminal case against a Russian figure so far this year. This […]

Filed under: Russian Politics by Editor - Wednesday, March 27th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Dmitry Pumpyansky (lead image, left), the 53-year old oligarch who dominates the Russian steel pipes business, knows how to pay for protection. Last week the US Treasury listed him as an oligarch whose corruption record and closeness to the Kremlin may qualify him for sanctions, according to Section 241 of the […]

Filed under: DwB, Oligarchs, US-Russia by Editor - Friday, February 2nd, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow It was a relatively bright day, November 21, 1920, when Vladimir Lenin, having won the civil war and driven off the American, British, French, Canadian and Australian expeditionary forces, announced: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country, since industry cannot be developed without electrification.” It was a […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Thursday, September 22nd, 2016
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If Anatoly Chubais ever had scruples, or reluctance at setting them aside, he has understood the lesson offered by that arch-plotter, the Marquise de Merquise in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the pre-revolutionary French classic, who advised: “the best way of overcoming scruples is to leave those who have them with nothing more to lose.” In Chubais’s […]

Filed under: DwB by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 23rd, 2004
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Anatoly Chubais is the biggest factotum in Russia, and an oligarch of sorts, in part because he controls United Energy Systems (UES), the electricity utility on which the profit margins of several other oligarchs depends; and also because he was the government official who rigged the privatization schemes that created the oligarchs’ private wealth. Because […]

Filed under: DwB by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 22nd, 2003
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The four-term (2013-2027) Governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), Elvira Nabiullina, has assured the State Duma this week that the biggest enemy Russia faces is not the combined military and economic forces of the US and NATO, but over-heating in the domestic economy as it mobilizes to defend itself. […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Wednesday, October 29th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with When the Germans rolled through Russian defences in the Operation Barbarossa invasion of June 1941, the Soviet commander-in-chief Joseph Stalin ordered the executions of dozens of western army unit and air force commanders. Stalin’s reasons at the time were his suspicion of their treason;  a demonstration effect throughout the armed forces; […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Thursday, September 18th, 2025
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