By John Helmer, Moscow The Marche Slave and The Farewell of Slavianka, Tchaikovsky’s and Agapkin’s marches against the Turks, are always going to be popular in Moscow, whatever the Turks do. John Philip Sousa is not a name that’s heard on Moscow radio, and his Stars & Stripes Forever will not be broadcast. Far from […]

by Editor - Wednesday, April 6th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow Mr Hiccup (left) was the lead character of an Italian-Swiss cartoon of thirty years ago. His chronic hiccups persisted for years, inflicting cost, pain and misfortune on almost everyone unlucky enough to meet him. In each of 39 episodes Mr Hiccup tried a new remedy, but he always failed. Others paid […]

by Editor - Tuesday, April 5th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow Victoria Nuland (lead image, right), the US official in charge of regime change in Russia, Ukraine, and Europe, has repeated her tactics, this time to put pressure on the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left). The opening of a secret US indictment on March 21, after years of inaction, followed […]

by Editor - Monday, April 4th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow Mikhail Fridman, the control shareholder of a large Russian banking, telecommunications, grocery, and oil and gas group, has held another lunch with the Financial Times to demonstrate that he doesn’t want to answer questions about the risks to his assets in the Ukraine, where he was born and where he remains […]

by Editor - Sunday, April 3rd, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow A US Government effort to advance Turkish interests on Cyprus, and block Russia’s relationship with the government in Nicosia, has become the newest campaign of Victoria Nuland (lead image, left), the Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Ukraine and the campaign for regime change in Moscow. The target of the […]

by Editor - Tuesday, March 29th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow When empires collapse, it’s the death of the big beasts that is noticed first. In time, it’s the midgets of the empire which tell the longer story of the breaks in evolution. Just so, thirty-five million years before the dinosaurs made their exit, several Mesozoic creatures fell into pine resin, and […]

by Editor - Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow It’s not often that a king of venerable line comes to Moscow to bargain over the price of a tangerine. It’s also unusual that President Vladimir Putin tells his state guest that he doesn’t understand why the trade between their two countries has fallen sharply. That’s a question which should have […]

by Editor - Sunday, March 20th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow Rusal announced on March 9 that its earnings for 2015 were up, and its profit too. But Rusal’s share price, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, shot downwards by one of the largest one-day falls in months. Hong Kong Exchange sources say the Rusal share is so illiquid, there is […]

by Editor - Tuesday, March 15th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow Washington, DC, is not a death penalty state. So the local authorities don’t know how to put someone to death judicially. They also don’t have the knack of knowing when a death has been caused by a crime. That is what the Metropolitan Police Department and the Office of the Medical […]

by Editor - Sunday, March 13th, 2016
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By John Helmer, Moscow It was a marching song in 1915: “What’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile, so Pack up your troubles in your old kit-bag, And smile, smile, smile.” Three more years of war in Europe obliterated the smiles, and also the song. Under pressure from the US campaigns on the […]

by Editor - Thursday, March 10th, 2016
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