By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Officially speaking, the Russians ended the year-long Black Sea Grain Initiative by refusing to renew it on July 17. Practically, it has been doomed for weeks.  The Ukrainian attacks on the Togliatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline (June 8) and the Taman ship-loading terminal (June 2); Ukrainian efforts to use the grain carriers […]

by Editor - Friday, July 21st, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On the battlefield the Ukraine has pioneered the Mosquito Tactic – that’s sending units of dozens of soldiers running towards Russian defence fortifications in several swarms at the same time, across a half-dozen salients up and down the line of contact. In parallel, in the air and on the sea […]

by Editor - Wednesday, July 19th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In war, the losing side has several options. Fighting to the death is one of them, capitulation and surrender are another. Depending on their rank, religion, honour, and offshore bank accounts, the losers may run away or commit suicide. The Ukrainian regime, with the assistance of the North Atlantic Treaty […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 16th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December. Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks […]

by Editor - Wednesday, July 12th, 2023
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Translated from Colonel Cassad, with afterword by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Damage control Today it’s a little funny to see the bewilderment from reports of Putin’s meeting with Prigozhin, because, they say, Putin had called Prigozhin a rebel, and then meets with him.

by Editor - Monday, July 10th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the current war with the US, the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Russia and of its governor, Elvira Nabiullina (lead image, right), has been criticized in the State Duma and in the domestic media for catastrophic negligence in exposing the Bank’s currency reserves to the US freeze […]

by Editor - Monday, July 10th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There’s no American anti-war movement in the Vietnam War, Syrian War or Afghan War sense of the term. That’s because there is a genuine US strategic interest at stake in fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, and further.  No comparable strategic stake existed in the earlier wars. The stake in […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 9th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The calls have begun in Moscow, starting among the war blogs and battlefield reporters, for keeping intact Yevgeny Prigozhin’s conglomerate of military budget contractors. The reason argued is that they have established themselves so strategically in the logistics of the military services that they cannot be purged without doing greater […]

by Editor - Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Russian regime change is war – it isn’t cricket. Between the US, the UK, and Russia there have been regime-changing games for more than a century now.  Thirty years ago Boris Yeltsin was their big hit.  They have been bad losers since then. In cricketing terms, the Kremlin regime-changing plan […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 2nd, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On Friday, June 30, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was asked if, after the armed mutiny of the week before, he can give guarantees that Russia is stable and will not sink into turmoil? “We are not obliged to explain anything or make assurances,” Lavrov replied. “We are acting in […]

by Editor - Saturday, July 1st, 2023
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