By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Every year at this time, as certain and regular as the Moscow city administration turns off the central hotwater boilers for cleaning, we close the office, postpone the flow of Dances with Bears, suspend the tweets. But just as surely as Muscovites install electric water heaters for substitutes during the profilaktika (профилактика […]

by Editor - Sunday, August 2nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow, with Sahar Dadjoo, Teheran  @bears_with In an interview and video recorded in Teheran on Wednesday, Sahar Dadjoo asked the questions and these are the answers published on August 1.    In focus is the US-guided Ukrainian drone attack on the Iranian cargo vessel Ana in the Caspian Sea which occurred on July 25. […]

by Editor - Sunday, August 2nd, 2026
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By Oleg Tsarev, Crimea, introduced by John Helmer  @bears_with The current restrictions imposed by the Trump Administration and NATO on Ukrainian drone and missile strike options against Russia reflect a strategy known as boiling the frog in warm water. This is a strategy of gradual escalation, the timing of which is measured stepwise – so western […]

by Editor - Saturday, August 1st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The appearance this week of an unrecognized man (lead images, top right, bottom 2nd from right) standing next to General Dan Caine and behind Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is a signal that the days of President Donald Trump as peacemaker are […]

by Editor - Saturday, August 1st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It doesn’t take much time to compile from the works of John Mearsheimer a file of his mistakes of prediction, miscalculations of US and Ukrainian operations, and strategic misjudgements about the US war against Russia in Europe. And yet, despite the plainness of this record, Mearsheimer is treated as a valuable […]

by Editor - Thursday, July 30th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with As tactics for warfighting against Russia go, drones are a new one, and if measured by Russian public opinion, they are more effective for the time being than old tactics like Alexei Navalny-type operations, or Trojan Horses like Mikhail Khodorkovsky,   or Fifth Columnists like Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and the […]

by Editor - Thursday, July 30th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with How long is a piece of string? The recorded history of that question began in a New York newspaper in 1885. At the time and ever since, asking the question implied the answer that there is no limit to the string.  The answer in the lead images, a Jeff and Mutt […]

by Editor - Wednesday, July 29th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with In the wartime succession stories now screening in your neighbourhood – that’s President Donald Trump’s and President Vladimir Putin’s — the money does the talking which the special effects on the Imax screen cannot. At the London BFI Imax cinema, the Odyssey film is booked out through its scheduled run from now […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 26th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The real reason – that’s to say, the White House election campaign reason – for Marco Rubio’s request to meet Sergei Lavrov in Manila for thirty minutes last week was this. Click to view or listen to the new podcast with Martin Sieff and Pelle Neroth Taylor, Capitals Uncovered Episode 138. […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 26th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The question everyone in their warfighting chairs has been asking President Vladimir Putin,  with a follow-up that no one is reporting: What is Putin going to do to answer the escalation of drone war on the Russian mainland and deter the US and its allies from their war to destroy the […]

by Editor - Thursday, July 23rd, 2026
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