By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Under threat of formal investigation for breaking the law and lying to the press, David Ridley (lead image), the English county coroner in charge of investigating the alleged Novichok poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess, has announced a new inquest hearing. This week through the coroner’s office in Salisbury, a new […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 6th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union is John Heathershaw’s métier. Heathershaw is a professor at the University of Exeter where he specializes in studying and teaching “conflict, security and development in authoritarian political environments, especially in post-Soviet Central Asia.”  Recently, he took exception to my critical reviews of books on […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 16th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The British Government’s narrative that a Kremlin-ordered assassination plot against a former GRU agent, Sergei Skripal, in March of 2018 also caused the death of a woman, Dawn Sturgess,  three months later,  has collapsed for lack of evidence admissible in court.   After nineteen months of investigations by hundreds of […]

by Editor - Monday, October 14th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Robert Service (lead images) commits the pathetic fallacy over and over. It isn’t that his fallacies are pathetic, and so deserve to be pitied. It is that Service takes money for writing histories, purporting to be about Russia, its revolutionary leaders, and now its current leader, by projecting his own […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 3rd, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Aestivation in August is something to be shared with the African lungfish, alfalfa weevils and salamanders. For them, in the hottest season of the year it’s obligatory to conserve energy and retain water in the body for unluckily long periods. If they don’t wish to die, they must be taught […]

by Editor - Friday, August 2nd, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with To introduce himself to the international financial markets, ahead of his arrival in Osaka for the G20 summit meetings, President Vladimir Putin has given an interview to the Financial Times, a Japan-owned, England-based newspaper. The publication has headlined its report: “Vladimir Putin has trumpeted the growth of national populist movements in […]

by Editor - Thursday, June 27th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow On April 16, 2019, the New York Times made a mistake. The newspaper acknowledged it swiftly, publishing a three-line correction. “Correction: April 16, 2019 – An earlier version of this article misstated the C.I.A. tenure of Nicholas Dujmovic. He served as an intelligence officer for 26 years, not 23.” The mistake […]

by Editor - Wednesday, April 17th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Russia has grown up; Derk Sauer (lead image), boy scout for American, Dutch and NATO plots for Kremlin regime change since Boris Yeltsin left office, can’t. Under cover of Russian frontmen, he has bought back the Moscow Times, and put his son Pyotr in charge of opinion. The opinion is the […]

by Editor - Wednesday, April 10th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow “Always George’s problem,” John le Carré (lead image, left) has written in his latest resurrection of his best-known MI6 officer, George Smiley (right), “seeing both sides of everything. Wore him out.” “Breathtaking”, claimed an Irish novelist with no government experience, in a London newspaper review. “Gripping”, chimed a BBC journalist whose […]

by Editor - Tuesday, April 9th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Sergei Skripal poisoned himself by accident on March 4, 2018, in the centre of Salisbury. At the time  he was engaged in an operation, freelance or official, which was known to the British intelligence agency MI6. The two Russians, Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, who visited Salisbury on March 3 and […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 31st, 2019
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