by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

It’s near-certain that no Russian general, nor member of the Stavka,  nor President Vladimir Putin has read Biggles.* If one of them had, he would accept that now, after a long time of forgetfulness, the Germans are again the enemy who can and must be defeated by Biggles or his successors — if civilization is to be saved in Europe.

They are the original Germans, with their headquarters in Berlin. Not the new Germans – they are the Americans who occupy Germany, and direct it from their headquarters in Ramstein, Mons, Brussels, and Washington.

“Look out, there is a Hun” – this is the first line of a warning Biggles sang to alert his partner to a guard on patrol at a castle operated as headquarters and prison by the German Secret Service.  Biggles was singing to the tune of the British national anthem, God Save the King. “Look out, there is a Hun/Quite near you with a gun.”

The war that is now accelerating to its climax on the Ukrainian battlefield requires the same alert and wit; the words are the same, the tune is now the Russian national anthem. And the Huns are not the only ones approaching with a gun. So are the Frogs, Limeys, and Doughboys.  When Biggles was fighting his war, it was his clear understanding that the Germans were the principal enemy in Europe and worldwide. He regarded the French and the Americans as necessary but weak, unsteady, and incompetent allies.

What is an intrepid mind like Biggles to think and to do now?

At the moment the approval ratings and voter preference polls show that the alliance against Russia is ruled by the weakest governments in their post-war histories: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government is down to 17% preference, Scholz to 20% approval; French President  Emmanuel Macron is down to 30% approval, and his successor would lose to the Rassemblement National (“National Rally”); Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s approval is 9%, and his Conservative Party is trailing the Labour Party by 23%; President Joseph Biden is at 39.5% approval, losing to candidate Donald Trump by 2% nationally, more in the key states.

These politicians are threatening to escalate their war against Russia with long-range, nuclear-capable missiles and more forces on the ground in the Ukraine; as Macron has suggested, the plan is to reinforce Ukrainian defences either west of Kiev, along the Belarus, Polish, and Romanian borders, or in a line for the defence of Odessa and Kiev.    If the calculation of these politicians is that their talk will trigger a rally-round-the incumbent effect in the electorate, they already know from their polls this will fail.  

The military calculation has been rejected by reserve or retired French and German generals who point out that additions to the command, technical,  and special forces they have already deployed in the Ukraine would survive for less than a week because they have no effective air cover;  no ground-to-air defence;  no survivable ground weapon of any kind;  and no fortification or bunker that cannot be penetrated and destroyed by the Russian Kinzhal and Iskander missiles and the heavy FAB-1500 bunker-busting bomb.

“The enemy [of France] is not Vladimir Putin but Emmanuel Macron,” retired General André Coustou  said on March 7. “He is the liquidator, the destroyer of France. He’s the one who should go!” Coustou, who has been at war with Macron since 2018,    added that “our weakness, our vulnerability” makes for “a concrete impossibility for the time today.”  

This is not the German generals’ view. That was revealed by Ingo Gerhartz, chief of the Luftwaffe, when he thought he was speaking in secret with his deputies, one of them a general on the airforce plans and operations staff.  “I will be grateful to you if you tell me not only what problems we have, but how we can solve them,” Gerhartz said.   “We are now fighting a war that uses much more modern technology than our good old Luftwaffe. This all suggests that when we are planning deadlines, we should not overestimate them…There are certain concerns if we have direct communication with the Ukrainian armed forces. Therefore, the question arises: can we use such a trick and second our people to MBDA [German arms maker]? Thus, direct communication with Ukraine will only be through MBDA, this is much better than if such a connection exists with our Air Force…I think that our people will find an option. We just need to be allowed to try first, so that we can give better political advice. We need to be better prepared so we don’t fail because the KSA [Kommando Strategische Aufklärung, “Strategic Reconnaissance Command”, a German intelligence organization] may have no idea where the [Russian] air defence systems actually are.”

Trick and try first — this is what the German generals are doing.  They and the Berlin ministers supporting Gerhartz have been contradicted in public by Scholz who claims: “I am the chancellor and that is why it is like this.” A scheme to implement the Gerhartz plan and preserve Scholz in his camouflage is in discussion with the Sunak government.  

Moscow sources are divided. There are those who believe the political and military calculation of these allies is cynical: they realize their war is lost to Russia – the Ukrainian battlefield as a territory and also the weapons, intelligence, command and control they have supplied – and they are preparing to avoid taking the blame at the next election and defence budget votes.  

Other Moscow sources caution the war in the east has been won, and lost by NATO, but not the war in the west and north. One close to the Defense Ministry warns that “too much is being read into battles won and troops defeated.” This source believes “the best trained Ukrainian reserves and battle groups are west of the Dnieper and in the north. The reserves on the eastern front are fodder, disposable. It’s been clear to the US and the others for some time that the eastern part will be lost. The real battle will be when the main offensive begins for Odessa and Kiev – if it does.” According to this source, the real meaning of the Macron remarks and of the public reaction to the Gerhartz plan is the coming Battle of WoD. “The West of Dnieper [WoD] is where the war will be fought. That’s where the Russian offensive will be met with the best-trained troops and equipment; they are still uncommitted, much still outside the Ukraine. They will be moved in large numbers, but only to defend WoD.”

In the Biggles stories, von Stalhein is far cleverer than any German in command or in power for a generation.  “Do you think you are in a position to dictate terms to me?” Von Stalhein says to Biggles inside the castle. “Whether I am or not, I’m doing it”, Biggles returned. “It’s time you knew me well enough to know that I’ll do what I say. I’m not given to threatening; but go your own way and you sign your death-warrant. I’ll see to that; I’ll hunt you down and kill you like a mangy wolf, if I have to spend the rest of my life doing it.”

The Russian president and the Stavka don’t need to read Biggles to say this. They have already  said it. What remains to be revealed — not said in advance — are their intrepid methods for defeating the Hun.

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by Editor - Tuesday, March 12th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Last week it happened that God and the United States Treasury managed to underwrite a record issue of Israel Government bonds to continue the war against the Arabs in Gaza, West Bank,  Lebanon, Syria, Iraq – and Iran if necessary.  

The war financing comprised $2 billion of five-year bonds, and $3 billion each of 10 and 30-year bonds.

The US Treasury guarantees bond holders that if Israel defaults on repayment of its obligations,  the US will pay instead. Notwithstanding this, the Israelis were obliged to offer an extra 1.35%, 1.45%, and 1.75% more in interest over the going rate for US Treasury bonds for the same length of term.

The Reuters news agency headline on March 6 celebrated “Israel sells record $8 billion in bonds despite Oct 7 attacks, downgrade”.   The propaganda agency based in New York quoted Israel’s Accountant-General as claiming the bond placement “results showed an “unprecedented expression of confidence in Israel’s economy by the world’s largest international investors”.*

In fact, according to well-informed bond trade sources in Europe, with the higher interest rates the market has just demanded from the Israelis, the spread between the Israel bonds and US Treasuries has never been wider, and the worse this spread will become for Israel. This is a vote of no-confidence from the market which the Israelis, the Americans, and their media are trying to keep secret.  

The longer the war is protracted, the more obvious the costs of Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) failure will become – and the deeper the negative bond sentiment will grow. By converting secrecy into money, the market is signalling that it has begun to turn against Israel – and profit at Israel’s expense.    

Also unprecedented is the secrecy in which the “expression of confidence” has been managed by the US, French, and German banks acting as managers of the Israeli bond issue;  and of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has had regulatory oversight of the process. The debt financing has been reported as a “private placement”; this has removed the requirement that the Israelis produce a public prospectus explaining how they think their war – plausibly genocide, according to the International Court of Justice in its ruling of January 26, 2024  – is going, and how long the IDF claim it will last.

This does not remove the legal requirement on the two US banks engaged in marketing the bonds to US investors, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, to submit a formal application for SEC approval of what is called a letter of consent. However, asked to confirm the contents of the letter of consent application for the sale of the Israeli bonds, and its official approval, the SEC has refused to give any answer.

Goldman Sachs was asked the same questions. The bank also refuses to say.

Last October the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon,*  issued a personal letter to the bank’s employees claiming the Hamas operation was a “violation of fundamental human values”:   Solomon then proposed a $2 million gift of bank funds “to organizations providing critical support and humanitarian relief in Israel”; plus additional bank money, three bank dollars for every one contributed by bank staff making donations under $25, and one for one if the staff contribution was over $25. Asked how much money has been raised for Solomon’s gift to the Israelis, the bank is refusing to reply.

In other words, Israel’s public genocide is a private secret among Americans who are paying for it, and among US government officials responsible for regulating the scheme according to US law.

According to well-informed bond traders, this deal-making is worth in fees to the dealmakers, led by Goldman Sachs, about $100 million.

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by Editor - Monday, March 11th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

As enemies go, Victoria Nuland (lead image), the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, was as threatening for Russia as the Thane of Cawdor was for Scotland and Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play about multiple homicide to capture state power.   

Cawdor repented for his treason in the moment before he died on the scaffold. His execution  then allowed Macbeth to take Cawdor’s title and assets for himself, then move on to murder the Scottish king, and replace him until Macbeth was killed himself.

The murdering Nuland has committed was foretold by many more sources than the three witches in Shakespeare’s plot.  

But if Nuland has witchly premonitions, she lacks Macbeth’s and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking guilt. In Nuland’s case, it is plain that as her murdering has accelerated, she has been gorging herself with food. In the play Lady Macbeth succumbed and then killed herself offstage. Nuland has just left the stage one hundred pounds heavier than when she entered it. Not auspicious, according to the Heart Foundation.

The script of Nuland’s exit is also not Shakespearian in quality. There is not a single Washington journalist or analyst whose job it has been for years to follow the scheming inside the State Department to report what those in a position to know believe is the reason for Nuland’s hasty “resignation”, as it is being called by the Washington Post,  the New York Times,  and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken. His public obituary started with the idea that he had been taken by surprise when Nuland “has let me know that she intends to step down in the coming weeks”; it ended with the immediate naming of Nuland’s replacement,  and her tombstone inscribed with “the lasting mark she’s made on this institution and the world.”  

For the haste of her exit; for its timing late in the US presidential election campaign and as the Ukrainian military collapses, no one in a position to know believes Nuland’s reasons as they have been leaked by reporters close to her – that her ambition had been offended by her failure to be promoted from Number-3 to Number-2 at State; that her feminism was violated by the non-promotion; and that her Russia warmaking had been subordinated by the higher priority of the White House to fight China.

Nor is her departure a case of avoiding blame for the failure of US policy in the Ukraine and in Europe, as the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova,  declared yesterday. Nuland is responsible for “the fiasco of American foreign policy”, Zakharova said. “The bet was a huge one. Everything was staked by the liberal Democrats starting with Barack Obama. That bet has now been lost. An absolute fiasco — the rush by V.A. Zelensky begging for at least something more — the White House rejecting his requests — discord everywhere in NATO… No one has a clear idea what to do…A complete fiasco.”  

Zakharova didn’t claim that the US and NATO leaders, their military staffs, and political advisors lack clarity on what they don’t want to risk – that’s to continue the war which Nuland has been promoting, and to escalate it with new weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield, and by attacks deep into Russia itself with nuclear-capable missiles like the German Taurus and US F-16s.  

If that is what the Russians think is happening and if they are correct – re-read the double negative — then the reason for Nuland’s exit is either that she was forced out, principally by the Joint Chiefs of Staff  before she could do more damage to US military assets in Europe; or that she decided not to be in office when the Articles of Capitulation are signed between Kiev, Lvov, and Moscow.

Unlike Lady Macbeth, Nuland has not gone offstage to expire. The Fat Lady isn’t singing the only song Nuland thinks she can still sing.

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by Editor - Thursday, March 7th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Ingo Gerhartz, (lead images), 58,  was once a conscript in the German Luftwaffe who turned his ambition to be a fighter pilot into a Pentagon-supervised career  to the very top of the German Air Force for the past six years.

The skinheaded  Gerhartz has never faced combat in the air or even hostile fire from the ground, although for nine months of 2009 he dropped bombs on Afghanistan. He was a colonel then. It took him another six years acting as air force public relations spokesman in Berlin, before he was promoted to brigadier general. He made major general and lieutenant general in three years in a Berlin bunker.  

However, Gerhartz has shed his blood. That was last November, when he donated it at a Tel Aviv hospital for those Israel Defence Forces who were hit by Palestinian soldiers defending against the genocide of Gaza.  

Frank Graefe, 57, started his Luftwaffe officer’s career at the same time as Gerhartz and was better educated. But Gerhartz got ahead of Graefe in the air and on the promotion list. Both were trained in the US on Phantom fighters; Graefe then did more time at his desk than in the cockpit, and took nine years to get from lieutenant colonel to colonel. Gerhartz managed that promotion in six years. Even in Afghanistan, where Graefe also served, he sat on a chair in a heavily guarded office in Kabul. Graefe has never been in combat.

But he has served under direct Pentagon control at its branch on Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, which is known as the German embassy. Graefe was raised to brigadier general to act as military attaché there.  “From Neuburg to the centre of power” is the headline in a  Saarland regional newspaper which Graefe arranged to advertise himself in Washington; Saarland is Graefe’s home state;  he is the most important figure ever to have been born in the village of Nohfelden, which is a short drive south of Cochem, Gerhartz’s home town next to the Büchel nuclear air base.  

From the Pentagon Graefe returned to Berlin to serve under Gerhartz, but it is unclear —  or remains secret —  on which staff Graefe is serving; he is not ranked at the top of the Air Operations Command  nor at the top of the Forces Command,  nor on Gerhartz’s headquarters staff.

Graefe’s relationships with the Pentagon and with the US Air Force General Charles Brown Jr., now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have been watched and assessed by Russian military intelligence for some time. Graefe’s work,  together with Gerhartz,  in running the NATO Air Defender 2023 exercise last June  was a rehearsal and test run for F-16 attacks on Russia from airfields in Germany, Romania, and Poland to be used for refueling, electronic warfare, command and control, as well as disguise and deception; read the analysis here.  

On February 19, when Gerhartz discussed the new operation combining F-16s with the Taurus missile,  Graefe repeatedly emphasized how many months of delay would be required to prevent “an erroneous use…a rocket may fall on a kindergarten, and again there will be civilian casualties. These aspects must be taken into account.” Graefe also insisted: “We need to make sure that from the very beginning there is no language that makes us a party to the conflict.”   

Gerhartz replied dismissively; the transcript exposes Gerhartz as gung-ho for attacking  Russia, the sooner the better. “When we are planning deadlines, we should not overestimate them,” Gerhartz told Graefe. “There is no basis to say that we cannot do this. There is a certain scale where the ‘red line’ lies politically, there is a ‘long’ and a ‘short’ path, there are differences in terms of using the full potential.”  

Graefe’s role in exposing Gerhartz’s operational plan to attack Russian civilian and military targets has drawn scrutiny from the GRU.

A report on what the Russians have learned about Graefe and Gerhartz appeared yesterday in Moscow. This is written by Yevgeny Krutikov, a former GRU field officer and one of the leading security analysts publishing in the Moscow internet platform Vzglyad. This is how the German enemy is to be seen.   

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by Editor - Tuesday, March 5th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

There is a fraction of the Germans who, when speaking or writing in public, consider themselves the good Germans. Good Germans are to Germany as propaganda is to truth – negligibly fractional; sometimes truth-telling; always irrelevant to the outcome of the wars which Germany wages.

The political comprehension of the Germans — to adapt Mao Zedong’s axiom that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun — only comes out of the barrel of a Russian gun. The good Germans define themselves publicly by wishing this weren’t true because they realise there’s nothing they can do to stop the rest of their countrymen from throwing themselves at Russian guns until there are no more of them, the good Germans among them.

One of these wishfully good Germans is called Florian Roetzer, who founded the widely read internet publication Telepolis in 1996,   and retired to write elsewhere in 2021.  Roetzer has just published his analysis of the transcript of last month’s teleconference at which the chief of the German Air Force, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, discussed with three subordinates a plan of attack on Russian civil and military targets with the German Taurus KEPD 350E cruise missile;    conceal this German operation behind British, French, and Ukrainian forces and German commercial companies; accelerate the missile deliveries; and present the plan for approval by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Gerhartz  is not only waging personal war against Russia, as he explained on the telephone two weeks ago, on February 19. Last November he declared personal war in alliance with the Israel Air Force in implementing the genocide of Gaza.  

The Gerhartz transcript, translated from German, can be read here.  

In Roetzer’s new analysis, published on March 2 in Overton magazine,   the problem is not (in Roetzer’s mind) that Gerhartz and the Bundeswehr are losing their war on the Ukrainian battlefield, or that they are aiming to provoke Russian counterattack against German targets outside that battlefield.

“The fact that Russia was able to eavesdrop on the conversations of the German officers…is a major problem for the Bundeswehr, also in relation to its partners, who may no longer trust it.”

“The bigger [sic] problem, however, has been Putin’s for quite some time, after one red line after another has been crossed by the NATO countries, without Russia really reacting to it, apart from warnings…But so far, Putin has accepted any military support for Ukraine. But if it is now becoming more and more public knowledge that NATO countries are directly supporting Ukraine with target data and in general in attacks with Western missiles and cruise missiles through the participation of soldiers in civilian and intelligence officers, and thus become parties to war, then Putin, who propagates that Russia is defending itself in Ukraine, has the problem of showing weakness and only bluffing, if no action is taken against it.”

“It is obvious” – according to Roetzer – “that Russia cannot compete against a NATO weakened by the Ukraine war and therefore avoids a direct conflict. But if the attacks on Russia continue to increase and Western weapons are openly used, Putin will lose support in Russia if there is no military response…With the publication of the wiretapped conversation of the German officers, the Russian leadership may have harmed itself – if only because the Bundeswehr must now try to close the security gap. It is possible that [state media director Margarita] Simonyan has gone too far here. The question is whether the publication was coordinated with the Kremlin.”

That Germany is at war with Russia has been understood in Moscow for a long time. That there are good Germans like Roetzer who would like it to be otherwise for moral, legal, German national, or personal reasons is also well-known. Some of these good Germans have even served as German generals.  

What the Navalny Novichok episode of the autumn of 2020 revealed, followed by the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022; and now last month’s  teleconference conducted by Gerhartz – what all three episodes reveal is not how the Germans are  understood in Moscow, but rather how the good Germans react when confronted with the war they are powerless to deter or stop their countrymen from waging.

The impotence of the German opposition to this war is also well understood in Moscow. What remains is for the Kremlin and General Staff to decide to teach the Germans the only lesson by the only method they understand. That is the lesson the Germans have been failing to learn for seventy-nine years next month — since April 30, 1945, when Adolf Hitler shot himself before he could be captured by the Red Army waiting outside his bunker in Berlin.

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by Editor - Sunday, March 3rd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The collapse of the Ukrainian army following the battle of Avdeyevka, and its disorganized retreat, have accelerated Russian military thinking of how far westward the NATO allies will decide that the Ukrainian statelet can be defended against the expected Russian advance – and how fast new NATO defences can be created without the protection of ground-to-air missile batteries like Patriot, long-range artillery like the M777, and mobile armour like the Abrams, Bradley, and Caesar: all of them  have already been defeated in the east.

In short, there is no longer a NATO-command line of fortification east of the Polish border which deters the Russian General Staff. Also, no bunker for the Zelensky government and its NATO advisors to feel secure.

Cutting and pasting from the Russian military bloggers and the Moscow analytical media, as a handful of US podcasters and substackers are doing as often as their subscribers require, is the Comfy-Armchair method for getting at the truth.   Reading the Russian sources directly, with the understanding that they are reporting what their military and intelligence sources are saying off the record, is still armchair generalship, but less comfy,  more credible.

Offence is now the order of the day up and down the contact line. The daily bulletin from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow calls this “improving the tactical situation” and “taking more advantageous positions”. In the past three days, Monday through Wednesday, the Defense Ministry also reported the daily casualty rate of the Ukrainian forces at 1,175, 1,065, and 695, respectively; three M777 howitzer hits; and the first Abrams tank to be destroyed.  Because this source is blocked in several of the NATO states, the Russian military bloggers, which reproduce the bulletins along with videoclips and maps, may be more accessible; also more swiftly than the US-based podcasters and substackers can keep up.

Moscow sources confirm the obvious:  the operational objective is to apply more and more pressure at more and more points along the line, in as many sectors or salients (“directions” is the Russian term) as possible simultaneously.  At the same time, air attack, plus missiles and drones, are striking all rear Ukrainian and NATO airfield, road, and rail nodes, ammunition storages, vehicle parks, drone manufactories, fuel dumps, and other supply infrastructure, so as make reinforcement and redeployment more difficult and perilous.

What cannot be seen are the Russian concentrations of forces aimed in the north, centre and south of the battlefield. Instead, there is what one source calls “an educated guess is that when the main blow comes, it will be North,  Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava,  or Centre,  Dniepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye,  or both simultaneously.” For timing, the source adds, “after the Russian election.”

That is now less than three weeks away, on March 17. President Vladimir Putin will then reform his new government within four to six weeks for announcement by early May. Ministerial appointments sensitive to the General Staff’s planning are the Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, who is expected to remain in place; and the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who may retire.

Following the call of French President Emmanuel Macron for the “possibility” of French ground force deployment to the Ukraine battlefield, and the subsequent clarification by French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, the Russian assessment has been derisory. “As for Emmanuel Macron’s statements about the possibility of sending NATO troops to Ukraine,” replied Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova,  “I would like to remind you that just a month ago, the French Foreign Minister denied Paris’s involvement in recruiting mercenaries for the Kiev regime, and called direct evidence ‘crude Russian propaganda.’  There is a strong impression that the French President is, in principle, not aware of what his subordinates say, or what he says himself.  And now I want to remind Macron of the history of France. That is different. In April 1945, Berlin was defended by the French SS division known as Charlemagne, and a number of others. They also directly defended the Fuhrerbunker — Hitler’s bunker. They were among the last to be awarded the Nazi Order of the Knight’s Cross in the Third Reich. The French SS men from Charlemagne became the last defenders of the Reichstag and the Reich Chancellery. Emmanuel, have you decided to organize the Charlemagne II division to defend Zelensky’s bunker?”

The view in Moscow is that there is now as much indecision, vacillation,  and chaos between  the Elysée and the Hexagon Balard  in Paris as there is in Washington between the White House and the Pentagon, over what last stand NATO can make in the Ukraine, and where to position it —  east of Kiev, or east of Lvov and the Polish border region.

The Moscow source again: “the NATO fortress and bunker plan for the Ukraine is proving a failure, and the Ukrainians are falling back on the old Wehrmacht tactic of ad hoc battlegroups with  increasing percentages of unit leftovers and low-quality conscripts acting as fire brigades to plug holes in the lines so as to delay the Russian advances. But what is the bunker fallback plan along what lines – is the plan to wait until the Americans, French, Germans or Poles show up? This is the stuff of Nazi dreams. It’s too late.”

A western military source comments: “I’m not so sure, as some of the Russian milbloggers are, that the broad front approach [Russian General Valery] Gerasimov is taking heralds a new approach to modern warfare – or operational art, if you like. The push at different points, conserving men and materiel in favour of firepower is being done as much, or more out of political considerations, which include those of a domestic character (Putin’s public support, domestic stability);  and also the military objective since Day One of the Special Military Operation — to draw in and destroy as many and as much of the US-NATO manpower and equipment in the Ukraine as possible.”

“The Russian ‘retreat’ conducted in Fall of 2022 was part of the plan and struck me as being inspired by the Mongol tactic of attacking, making a big show of running away, only to turn to pursue and then destroy the enemy. The Ukrainians and their NATO handlers fell for it hook, line and sinker. Now they don’t have the forces needed to maintain their fortress strategy, let alone conduct much in the way of counter-attacks. It was in this fashion that Gerasimov gained the upper hand in the two-front war – the one on the Ukrainian battlefield and the one on the Russian home front.”

“Deep battle is still the Russian doctrine. Its form and components may change, but the concept remains the same. The art is in figuring out where and when the holes drilled in the other side’s military, economic, and political structures will line up, and present the path to be exploited by Gerasimov. We can bet he’s known for quite some time.”

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by Editor - Thursday, February 29th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Alexei Navalny’s organization outside Russia is now repudiating Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny’s mother, for having accepted the medical evidence and official certification that the cause of his death was an embolism, or blood clot, which stopped his heart.

On Monday, several days after the release of the post-mortem documents and of Navalny’s body to his mother’s custody,  Maria Pevchikh, Navalny’s script writer, and Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press secretary, have repeated their allegations that Navalny had been murdered. In their revised version of the story on Monday, Pevchikh claimed in a self-produced video that “on February 16, 2024, Vladimir Putin killed Alexei Navalny”.  

Reuters, the New York-based news agency, reported Pevchikh’s claim, adding that “Maria Pevchikh, who is based outside Russia, did not present documentary evidence for her assertion.”   The New York Times amplified Pevchikh’s allegations, but omitted the Reuters qualifier.  The newspaper did not report attempting to make contact with Lyudmila Navalnaya but added this innuendo: “it remained unclear whether his family would seek to conduct an independent autopsy before his burial.”

“Alexei Navalny could be sitting in this seat right now, right today,” Pevchikh broadcast.   “That’s not a figure of speech, it could and should have happened…Navalny was supposed to be free in the coming days.” Pevchikh then recited details of a purported exchange of Russian spies in prison outside Russia in exchange for Navalny and Americans in Russian prisons.

The NATO-funded Bellingcat organization was involved, Pevchikh said. “Investigator Hristo Grozev helped us devise and implement this plan.” Negotiations took place with American and German officials, she said, but “they did nothing.” She then said:  “Roman Abramovich was the one who delivered the proposal to swap Navalny to Putin. As an informal negotiator communicating with American and European officials, and at the same time representing Putin; an unofficial channel of communication with the Kremlin.” Pevchikh claims she asked Abramovich for details of what had been told to Putin and what the president replied. “Unfortunately”, Pevchikh said, “Abramovich did not answer these questions but he did not deny anything either.”

Yarmysh followed Pevchikh with a 3-line tweet: “We know why Alexei was killed right now. He should have been exchanged literally these days. An offer was made to Putin.”  

The evidence of prisoner swaps between the US, Germany,  and Russia is no news and   corroborated officially, although the identities of the swap candidates keep changing, as do the names of the reported go-betweens. Abramovich’s role as the intermediary in the abortive Istanbul negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials of March 2022  has not been followed with any report of subsequent intermediation by Abramovich, except to save himself from sanctions.  

All that is missing from the new Pevchikh-Yarmysh announcements is the medical evidence of the cause of Navalny’s death. That is being closely held by Navalny’s mother, and she is in charge of the arrangements for his funeral.  

In her latest tweet, Yarmysh implies this too is no longer under the outside organization’s control, as it proposes an alternative, parallel ceremony. “We are looking for a hall for a public farewell to Alexei,” Yarmysh said yesterday. “Time: end of this work week. If you have suitable premises, please contact us.”  

Pevchikh is based in London; Yarmysh left Russia in 2021 and is also abroad. They are the Whites now. The Reds, Navalny’s mother and Anatoly Navalny, his father, remain in Moscow. The Reds are holding the evidence that Navalny was not murdered and that everything  the Whites are saying is false.

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 27th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Two women, Kira Yarmysh (lead image, left) and Maria Pevchikh (2^nd left), made up the series of lies which in August 2020 claimed that Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok by a Russian state death squad – first in a cup of tea he drank at Tomsk Airport; then in a bottle of mineral water which he drank in his hotel room; and finally in the underpants he dressed himself with before the water, before the tea.

As each of these claims proved untrue on the public evidence,  they and Navalny agreed to the release of medical data collected by the group of German doctors who treated Navalny after his admission to the Charité Clinic in Berlin on August 22, 2020. But neither data presented in the doctors’ publication in The Lancet of December 22, 2020, nor the doctors’ report itself proved that Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok. That conclusion came in press releases from the German military, and then from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

According to the Berlin doctors, “severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor was subsequently diagnosed. 2 weeks later, the German Government announced that a laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) had identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient’s admission to Charité, a finding that was subsequently confirmed by the OPCW.”  

That’s a political advertisement, not a medical diagnosis – no doctor has signed his name to either, and no German military officer has signed his name to the first.

One day before The Lancet publication, on December 21, Navalny, Pevchikh and Yarmysh published their fabrication of the underpants story with the fake telephone call of an FSB agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, admitting to Navalny everything which had been disproved until that time.  The combination of fabricated evidence of the murder weapon and then of the murderer’s accomplice was repeated in the documentary film which won the Oscar award for documentary films in March 2023.  

Yarmysh was Navalny’s press spokesman in August 2020; she still is. Pevchikh was the script writer for Navalny and the channel to him from Anglo-American government agents,  as well from Russian financiers in London like Yevgeny Chichvarkin, once the Evroset mobile telephone magnate.  

If the two women had been telling the truth and Novichok had been in Navalny’s tea, water, or underpants, he would have been dead within minutes of contact. So too would Pevchikh who hand-carried the water bottle from Tomsk to Novosibirsk, then Omsk, and finally Berlin. Navalny’s blood, urine, skin, and hair, clinically tested and reported by the German doctors treating him at Charité Clinic, proved his collapse had been caused by a combination of drugs he had himself consumed.  

The two women, and other members of Navalny’s family, including his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, (3^rd left) 47, his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya (right), 69, and his daughter Daria, 23,  have all refused to disclose any medical data on his prior medical conditions and the medicines he was taking before the August 2020 episode. Navalny himself gave permission to the Charité Clinic doctors in Berlin to publish their test results in The Lancet report, believing they would corroborate his story.

Following Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, there has been no release of the medical data, nor the medicines Navalny was taking at the time of his death; the record of his vaccinations against Covid-19 which were given to him in Germany; his prior medical conditions; or the toxicology and pathology data collected in the post-mortem investigations following his death.

Russian law prohibits the release of this personal information without the permission of the senior next of kin and executor whom Navalny named in his will. He named his mother, Lyudmila. He did not name his wife, Yulia. His reason for doing that has begun to surface in Moscow. It marks infighting over the political succession to Navalny, and the money which the US has been providing to the Navalny organization.

That heirs fight over succession rights, assets and cash is commonplace. What has not yet been noticed in either the Russian or western press reporting is the document on which probate cases start the world over – the will of the deceased.

The first sign that an inheritance fight has begun is that while Lyudmila Navalnaya went to Kharp, where Navalny had been imprisoned, and Salekhard, where his body was taken for post-mortem testing, Yulia Navalnaya flew to California to meet President Joseph Biden.  Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake.

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by Editor - Sunday, February 25th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

When the previous piece on the Russian art market was published early this week, an Anglo-European art critic didn’t like the independent direction this market is now forced to take. He was also angry that his personal animus towards President Vladimir Putin, the Russian army,  and the war against the US and NATO in the Ukraine was quoted. “You sound like a Putin stooge”, he added.

The source is an Englishman working in Geneva named Simon Hewitt. He is emphatic in belittling the quality of Russian painters compared to their French counterparts, and also the Russian galleries, entrepreneurs, and promoters now trying to build the Russian art market – compelled for the first time in their history to be independent of foreign aesthetics and the business of the art trade; that’s  Anglo-French aesthetics, Franco-American business,*  and the Russian oligarchs dependent on them.   

Hewitt, who has been employed to follow the Russian art auctions of Christie’s, Sotheby’s and MacDougall’s, has now become a Russia hater. “I don’t expect to be back in Russia,” he has said, “until the war is over. I imagine that the Russian army will eventually vote with its feet as it did in 1917, but my guess is that won’t be for another 18 months or so.” Hewitt’s once measured assessments of Russian painting since 2014  have been transformed into a political and military ideology, the object of which is the defeat of Russia in the war, and its collapse into another revolution.

The capitulation of Russian culture to its US and European masters is what this ideology requires – and the recapture of the Russian art market by the triad,  the name which Russian art experts give to Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and MacDougall’s.*

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by Editor - Thursday, February 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

To the French artist Claude Monet goes the credit for inventing the idea of making money by producing series of paintings on the same subject – haystacks, poplar trees, church fronts, and water lilies – adding a premium for buying the series as a single lot; dubbing them with a theory of light refraction and of evanescence in the eye of the beholder; then advertising heavily in the newspapers.

Monet’s first Haystack sold for 2,500 francs ($500) in Paris in April 1891; at the time he advertised falsely that he had received double the price. In May 2019, one of his 25-piece Haystack series fetched $110.7 million in New York.*  

One isn’t obliged to appreciate Monet’s haystacks in order to appreciate the investment return which the art market is capable of producing, given the right ratio of short supply to heavy demand, plus a sustained effort at market rigging.

This is now the ambition, the calculation, and the hope of the leading fine art dealers of Moscow and St Petersburg as they devise their plan for marketing Russian painting after the sanctions war has removed Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and MacDougall’s from market competition and price fixing for Russian art and Russian art buyers.

“The word ‘Russia’ is currently unusable in the West,” says Simon Hewitt, an art market analyst in Geneva. “Russians cannot buy or sell in the West at present, period. That will remain the case for as long as Putin remains in power. I suppose a half-decent Aivazovsky will sell OK in Moscow but the more run-of-the-mill 19th century stuff will struggle to get 30% of what it was worth before Covid and will only appeal to optimists who hope that this figure might rise to 60% or so in the next decade.”

Hewitt’s lack of optimism isn’t shared by his counterparts in Moscow. They believe that in removing the “triad”, the three London auction houses from the Russian art market, the opportunity is now growing fast for Russian auction houses to achieve the house profits and rates of return for Russian art buyers which were impossible before the war.

“In the middle of 2023 the activity began picking up in the domestic market,” reports Denis Lukashin, a leading Moscow art expert and co-owner of Art Consulting, which advises Russian buyers on authentication of works and market pricing trends for individual artists. “Because Russian art was blocked in the foreign auction houses, lots of buyers came back to the Russian market. And they buy rather expensive items. Auction houses are presenting new items for public sale, which, before, were usually sold in a closed or private format.  So in the historic and fine art sector the prices are returning to the norm before February 2022. In the other genres, the owners, collectors and sellers won’t lose anything in price. I can say the prices have been rising  despite the new economic situation, and so has the demand for modern art.”

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 21st, 2024
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