By John Helmer, Moscow The three Russians with the largest fortunes in California are Mikhail Lesin, Leonid Lebedev, and Mikhail Abyzov. Lesin, a former government minister and Kremlin advisor on mass media, was found dead in a Washington, DC, hotel room on November 6; his death is being investigated by the homicide squad of the […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 17th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow For Russians to eat as much cheese as they want, there aren’t enough cows in Russia, and too many palm trees in Malaysia. The impact of year-old sanctions in cutting off the flow of imported cheese from Russia’s suppliers in Europe is to stimulate the production of domestic cheese. But at […]

by Editor - Friday, November 13th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Bible is clear on what horny musclemen like Samson should beware. If they want to go bed with Delilah types, they may wake up without their hair on. Oleg Deripaska, control shareholder of the Russian aluminium monopoly Rusal and of Russian Machines, a holding of automobile and automotive component manufacturers, […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 11th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Australian and Dutch police investigating the evidence of the shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 have gone public in disagreement with their superiors and with their governments’ political leaders. The split has opened between forensic investigators and police on the one hand, who say they aren’t convinced what weapon caused the […]

by Editor - Monday, November 9th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Radoslaw Sikorski (lead image, right) plotted with the owner of Polish coalmines and electricity plants to use European Union sanctions against Russia to stop imports of rival, low-cost Russian coal in the Polish market. A clandestine tape-recording of a conversation between Sikorski, who was Poland’s foreign minister at the time, and […]

by Editor - Friday, November 6th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Noone holds Chrystia Freeland in higher esteem than she does. When she was the Financial Times correspondent in Moscow, she would react to correction or criticism by screaming down the telephone receiver. That’s when, among her fellow reporters, she picked up the Hysteria Freeland handle. That also is the assessment, according […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 5th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow For the first time in the international art auction market, paintings of the Soviet period between 1930 and 1990 have been auctioned in London, setting market benchmarks for several of the styles and genres included in the show, and a multi-million pound record for Aleksandr Deineka, a Moscow-based artist who died […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 4th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow 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, including Marine Le Pen of the National Front. […]

by Editor - Monday, November 2nd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow If it wasn’t for a Russian, Americans wouldn’t be able to lick large lollipops. Samuel Born – it isn’t known what his original Russian name was – emigrated to the US at the end of the 19th century. There he invented an apparatus he called the Born Sucker Machine. Its function […]

by Editor - Friday, October 30th, 2015
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CLICK TO ENLARGE By John Helmer, Moscow Investigations into the collapse of National Bank Trust, one of the largest Moscow banks to be rescued by the Central Bank of Russia and the Deposit Insurance Agency, have targeted a Cyprus-based management group as the operational headquarters of a scheme which, according to current calculations, may have […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 28th, 2015
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