by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Despite an order from President Vladimir Putin to arrange a nationwide vote on his proposed amendments to the Russian Constitution, the Central Election Commission and its director Ella Pamfilova are unable to confirm the contents of the ballot paper, the counting rule for voter approval or disapproval, the threshold of voter turnout for the vote to be valid, or even the date of the vote itself.

“This is a true plebiscite”, Putin told a meeting of the Kremlin-appointed working group on the constitutional amendments last week.   “Citizens of the Russian Federation should record their authorship of the law. It will be as the people say. If the people reaffirm during the vote that they support the law, it will enter in force and amendments will be made to the Constitution. If they do not confirm their support for the law, there will be no amendments to the Constitution.”

A press release, issued the next day by the Commission, claimed that “on February 14, 2020, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin signed an order to prepare for the all-Russian vote on the approval of changes to the Constitution of the Russian Federation”. The text of the three-page order combines the obvious with the superfluous;  it omits the important altogether. 

Paragraph 1 says: “State authorities, local self-government bodies, and other state bodies and organizations should prepare for the all-Russian vote on approving amendments to the Constitution”.  Nowhere in the six paragraphs which follow does the President make clear what an “all-Russian vote” shall be or do.  Para.2 says the CEC should be in charge of “introduction, operation and development of automation tools, legal training of voters, professional training of members of election commissions and other organizers of elections, referendums, and publication of the necessary printed materials”. Government officials at all levels “should assist election commissions in preparing for the all-Russian vote, as well as in providing logistical support for its preparation”, according to Para. 3. The remaining paragraphs set out how state budget money should be transferred, banked, and disbursed for the CEC’s expenses.

When officials were asked to clarify the rules of the “all-Russian vote” for valid turnout, voter approval or disapproval, and the law regulating this “all-Russian vote”, as distinct from a constitutional referendum, spokesmen for Pamfilova at the CEC and for Sergei Kirienko, the deputy chief of the president’s staff in charge of the vote, refused to say. “We will answer when we are ready,” a CEC official said. Her telephone is no longer being answered. The Commission is unready because Kirienko has been unable to finalize Kremlin agreement on the instructions. In the meantime, the Kremlin has also ordered the State Duma to delay its second-reading debate on the proposed constitutional amendment law for another month. In his February 14 order Putin omitted fixing the date of the national vote for April 22, which had been reported days earlier. That day, the Kremlin did not realize, is the 150^th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s birth.

by Editor - Monday, February 17th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It is exactly two years since the case of two Russians, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, began with their collapse on a park bench in the middle of England on the afternoon of March 4, 2018.

On their anniversary it is necessary to tell this story. But it isn’t the story of what happened. This is because the only people who can tell that one, the Skripals, are locked away in isolation, guarded by determined men under secret government orders.

Instead, this is the story of what didn’t happen – provably didn’t happen because it was quite impossible circumstantially; and because the legal papers warranting that it did have not been signed by a judge, tested in a court of law, or released in public.

The facts which you have seen, heard or read about the incident of March 4, 2018, have been falsified. Everything that has flowed from them is false too.  Understanding this is a start to the other story, and so something solid to work from – not missed until now; more like seen but disbelieved. As if the truth were fiction, and the fiction truth.

This is the story of how the largest and longest criminal investigation in modern British history ended in a prosecution without evidence of the crime, the weapon, the crime scene, and even of the crime victims. Allegations there are; evidence admissible in a British court of law there is not. That’s to say, a prosecution which will not be presented in court, before no judge and jury; with no witnesses on oath; and no verdict. That is no prosecution at all.

To say otherwise, as do the British Government, its allies abroad, and every one of its mass circulation media without exception, is a lie. The victims, it turns out, are held in a British prison, at a secret location, incommunicado, without access to lawyers to defend them, without contact with their families, or the consular representatives of the state whose passports they hold. No court has judged them or sentenced them to this punishment.

by Editor - Thursday, February 13th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The High Court in London has the duty to set the standard for distinguishing between Russian honesty and chicanery (the British varieties too). But it lacks the power. If the court had that, the Prime Minister, the House of Commons, the Secret Intelligence Service, the BBC, Oxford University Press, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs would be convicted of lying their heads off, and despatched from court with damages to pay, plus costs.

So it proved to be last week when the High Court ruled that Russian resident of the UK, Boris Mints, is arguably a grand larcenist whose money and assets, adding up to $570 million,  ought to be frozen until there can be a full adjudication of all the evidence.  This was the third successive High Court ruling to condemn Mints by three judges in just eight months. 

That’s a record for swift unanimity. There’s also a twist in this record, because the High Court has found Mints guilty of running away from the scene of the crime, thereby making near-certain that the part of the case the court has called arguable will be judged to be guilt for the grand larceny itself.

by Editor - Sunday, February 9th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Heir apparent, or accounting app.

In the politics of the Russian succession, Alexei Kudrin, 59 years of age, has two distinctions. The first is that he is hated by the General Staff, Igor Sechin, and a large number of Russian voters. The second is that he is loved by the US Government, the international banks, the Russian oligarchs, and President Vladimir Putin. He failed once, nine years ago, to replace Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister; Medvedev sacked him. He failed again, in May 2018, to become Putin’s vice president; Putin nominated him to be chairman of the state auditor, the Accounting Chamber, when his parliamentary vote of approval was the lowest ever. Kudrin is trying again, and Moscow sources believe Putin is already advancing him. How far will the two of them get?

by Editor - Thursday, February 6th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Mikhail Mishustin, the prime minister appointed by President Vladimir Putin on the evening of January 15, would be disqualified from holding office when the new eligibility rule which Putin proposed earlier that day becomes law. This is because Mishustin’s mother is reported to be of Armenian nationality, and under Armenian law that automatically entitles Mishustin to “live permanently in a foreign state”.

“State service is to serve the people,” Putin announced in his Federal Assembly speech, launching a set of constitutional proposals now moving to enactment in the State Duma. “Those who enter this path must know that by doing this they inseparably connect their lives with Russia and the Russian people without any assumptions and allowances. I suggest formalising at the constitutional level the obligatory requirements for those who hold positions of critical significance for national security and sovereignty. More precisely, the heads of the constituent entities, members of the Federation Council, State Duma deputies, the prime minister and his/her deputies, federal ministers, heads of federal agencies and judges should have no foreign citizenship or residence permit or any other document that allows them to live permanently in a foreign state.”

To address widespread reporting of Mishustin’s Armenian connection in the Russian and Armenian press, Mishustin’s spokesman at the Prime Ministry was asked: “What response does the Prime Minister make to press reporting that his mother was of Armenian nationality? What is the maiden name of the Prime Minister’s mother?” The spokesman did not respond on the telephone, and asked for an email.  Mishustin refuses to answer.

by Editor - Monday, February 3rd, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The first independent national opinion poll to measure Russian interpretations of President Vladimir Putin’s proposals for changing the Constitution has been reported by the Levada Centre in Moscow.   The results show a sharp decline in Russian confidence that the Constitution protects their rights and freedoms. On the meaning of Putin’s proposals for the division of power between executive and legislature,  the country is split down the middle. Half believe the proposals are a sincere reform; half believe they are a cynical power grab. This has not yet produced a measurable change, up or down,  in the national approval rating for the President. That was  reported last week by Levada at 68%. The polling was done in mid-December.  

by Editor - Sunday, February 2nd, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The English read detective stories for the pleasure of unravelling the crime,  proving that even if there are perfect crimes, in the majority of cases the perpetrators don’t get away with them because the detectives are usually cleverer. That’s fiction.

In real life,  Russian crimes are different. In the majority of cases, including less than perfect crimes involving vast sums of money, the majority of the perps get away with them; live richly  in the UK, Tuscany, or on the Cote d’Azur; and enjoy promotional publicity in the Financial Times. In the cases of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and William Browder they have become so famous for their lying, it’s a devil of a job for the truth to prevail against their fictions.

In the minority of Russian cases, the judgements of the High Court in London are thrillers, though complicated in the reading. In the majority of these judgements, the guilty are convicted, and the innocent vindicated.  But that’s a majority of a minority. A rarity in the library of true Russian crimes.

There have been many Russian yo-yo loan schemes since commercial banking began in Moscow just under thirty years ago. The modus operandi is that the controlling shareholder arranges for his bank to make large loans to offshore companies he invents and controls; passes the money from these fronts on to other fronts,  and then into his pockets. His plan from the start is not to repay the loans; the borrowing fronts have no security for their loans when the bank demands repayment, and there’s no cash. That’s the big crime.

The scheme requires dozens of fake entities, thousands of transactions, more than a handful of banks, and accomplices to manage the operations. Because they are in the know, they have to be paid well. They, too,  grow rich.  They commit the smaller crimes and compound the big one. Even if the big criminal is caught, and his underlings at the Russian end sent to prison until they inculpate their bosses, the offshore managers and fixers – those who keep the yo-yo revolving and the string from breaking – usually get away.

In the case of National Bank Trust versus Ilya Yurov (lead image), his partners and their wives, the High Court published its whodunit last week. The story can be followed from the start in 2015 in this archive;  Khodorkovsky makes several crooked cameo appearances. A British national named Benedict Worsley, the most important of Yurov’s managers,  changed sides when the yo-yo turned into a boomerang. To save himself, he agreed to take more money from the bank to assemble the evidence in the court case against the defendants. In the new court judgement, he reportedly switched sides again before the trial opened on October 1, 2018.  Neither side wanted to call him to testify because they all agreed he was a liar. The Worsley tale can be followed here. In the High Court judgement, Worsley is named 733 times. “It would appear that he was something of a fantasist and prone to exaggerate,” the judge ruled, “and that he was prepared to act dishonestly…”

by Editor - Thursday, January 30th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Wiltshire Police and Police Commissioner Angus Macpherson have revealed new lawlessness in their investigation of the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury on March 4, 2018.

by Editor - Tuesday, January 28th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The truth is that Consortium News trusted a Russian entity named the Strategic Culture Foundation and a Ukrainian reporter called Arina Tsukanova for a story published on February 27, 2017, about Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather Mikhail Chomiak, a propagandist and spy for the German Army who advocated and assisted in the murder of the Jews, Poles and Russians during World War II, and took his reward by stealing Jewish property – publishing company, office, apartment, antique furniture,  and limousine.  

The story about Freeland and the ethnic cleansing of Ukraine on which Freeland agrees, still,  with Chomiak,  was the truth. It’s also a truth she tries to escape by blaming the Russian state or Kremlin propaganda for repeating. Repeating doesn’t turn the truth into a lie, though as Joseph Goebbels advised, repeating the lie helps.

The point isn’t that Freeland is culpable in her grandfather’s sins. Her sin is hiding them, and her reason for doing so.  She agrees with Chomiak on turning Ukraine into the Greater Galicia it was Adolf Hitler’s objective to achieve between 1939 to 1945: that’s to say, cleanse the territory of Jews, Poles and Russians by killing them all. Chomiak succeeded with the first two; he was then employed by the US Army on the third. Freeland is keeping the plan in the family; they now have the Canadian government behind them.  Demonizing Russians is part of the same plan as it was in Chomiak’s day.

The irony is that the Freeland-Chomiak story was plagiarized from an American reporter who first published the details on January 19, 2017. At the time, and still, he was banned from entering Russia by the Kremlin because, according to a senior official in Moscow, “he writes bad things about our country”; no western journalist has been banned for as long – since September 27, 2010. The reporter was me.

There’s another truth wrapped in an irony. Arina Tsukanova, the byline writer of the Strategic Culture Foundation story and the Consortium News story, cannot be found; isn’t known at the media of Kiev and Crimea where her published pieces claim she works; and doesn’t reply to emails and Facebook communications. She is a ghost—a byline invented by the Strategic Culture Foundation in Moscow.

by Editor - Sunday, January 26th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Donald Trump’s lawyers have presented a 171-page legal brief defending him from  impeachment charges in the trial which began this week in Washington. The brief mentions Russia a total of 41 times.

Not counting repetitions, footnotes and references, Trump’s defence accepts as proven that Trump has defended Ukraine against Russian “aggression”; is “stronger in support of Ukraine against Russia than his predecessor [President Barack Obama]; and the Russian military is “scared” of Trump’s weapons.  

by Editor - Wednesday, January 22nd, 2020
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