By Gary K. Busch, London The most frustrating aspects of the media coverage of the current efforts to suppress the forces of Daesh (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria is that there is a dearth of ‘joined-up’ thinking behind most of the analyses. There is a lot of eyewitness reporting of daily events in the countries, […]

by Editor - Thursday, December 3rd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The International Monetary Fund has decided to delay fresh loan payments of $3.4 billion to Ukraine. In the meantime the World Bank has given the Deposit Guarantee Fund in Kiev $500 million to keep the leading Ukrainian banks solvent. The two international agencies have also agreed to the seizure of $174 […]

by Editor - Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The soybean is an edible legume native to East Asia. For Russians that means it’s a native of Siberia. Eighteen months ago, President Vladimir Putin declared Russian soybeans to be the best in the world. The president was on a tour of the Russian Far East, the region of the country […]

by Editor - Tuesday, December 1st, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Never before has the personal animosity of the heads of state of the United States and Turkey towards the President of Russia been so sharp and expressed so obviously. The consequences, too.

by Editor - Friday, November 27th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Andrei Melnichenko’s Eurochem group, one of Russia’s largest producers of fertilizers, has responded to a New York lawsuit this month from Alexander Mashkevich’s International Mineral Resources (IMR). Mashkevich is accusing Melnichenko of paying American agents to hack into his company computers, steal sensitive information, and promote litigation and propaganda damaging to […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 26th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow A generation ago, a Greek prime minister, whom the Soviet Politburo in Moscow underestimated, defeated a Turkish attack on Greek territory. That was Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou; the victory was the battle of the Aegean of March 26, 1987. Before that, no Russian had defeated a Turkish attack for more than […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 24th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Proof that oligarchs have more money than sense isn’t hard to come by. For a man with no business reputation left to lose in London to ask a jury in New York to judge his business rival to be a scoundrel is a proof that Alexander Mashkevich (lead image, with glasses), […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 24th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Otkritie Bank has received Rb157 billion from the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) and the Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) to rescue Trust Bank from bankruptcy. It is the second largest bailout in Russian bank history for what may be the longest lasting and most expensive bank fraud by its shareholders. But […]

by Editor - Monday, November 23rd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow A federal US judge and jury have dismissed a billion-dollar claim by Oleg Deripaska’s companies against investment bank Morgan Stanley after three years of litigation and two weeks of trial in a Manhattan courtroom. The jury verdict was announced on November 13. The case is the first in which Deripaska, chief […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 19th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The university that taught generations of American leaders that their manifest destiny is to make war on uncivilized people around the world is having a bad time of it, now that the US has lost the last four straight; and the losers are streaming in for their take of the manifest. […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 18th, 2015
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