- Print This Post Print This Post

by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Nothing like this has been said before by a leader of the Hellenes, Greek or Cypriot. “If we consider a solution through militarisation,” Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades (lead image, right) announced last week. “This will be the end of Cypriot Hellenism, which I do not want.”  What Anastasiades meant was that […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

by John Helmer with translation of report by Gevorg Mirzayan, Moscow   @bears_with If the war in Libya continues the way Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan thinks it has gone in recent days, the Eastern Mediterranean will be a Turkish sea for the first time since Napoleon defeated the Ottomans and took Egypt and Syria between 1798 […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with It is now a fortnight since President Vladimir Putin (lead image, left) announced  a tax on Russians exporting their cash and capital to tax avoidance havens abroad;  and since Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin followed to explain that Cyprus is the target. “We have started implementing the instructions on taxing dividends from […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Everything, including artillery fire, infantry movements, launch of drones, rockets and refugees,  even losses of territory and men, is planned by three Turks – President Tayyip Recep Erdogan (lead images);  Defence Minister and former head of the Turkish General Staff, Hulusi Akar;   and Hakan Fidan, head of the National Intelligence Organization […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Among Russian oligarchs, Alexei Mordashov (lead image, centre) holds two records. One is for empty promises: he has never told the whole truth in public or when he has visited President Vladimir Putin (right) for private conversations about his business plans and the Russian state interest. Mordashov’s other record is […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Russia has been warning Cyprus (lead image, left) for months to beware the risks and consequences of offering its offshore oil and gas to US companies in exchange for promises of a US military protectorate against Turkish invasion. So far the American response (lead image, centre – Secretary of State Michael […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Cover yourself. When it’s raining, you can’t borrow somebody else’s umbrella for shelter. In September 1938, the umbrella of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain became the symbol of his foolishness in accepting Adolph Hitler’s terms for the takeover of the Sudetenland, then Czechoslovakia,  as “peace for our time” (lead image, […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Under cover of its Russian S-400 air defence batteries, and ignoring US and European sanctions, Turkey is going on the offensive at sea, surrounding Cyprus, and by land, launching a weapon against the European Union against which there is no defence: a Turkish cannon firing 150,000 people at Europe’s borders […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This week a group of US senators has proposed to leave Turkey in control of the northern part of Cyprus, and force the Greek Cypriots to choose between the US and Russia for the economic and political future  of the south of the island. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed […]

- Print This Post Print This Post

By John Helmer, Moscow Leonid Lebedev (lead image, centre), a Russian oil and electricity trader and patron of  Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiades (right),  is set to lose his multi-billion-dollar claim for a stake in the sale of TNK-BP to Rosneft, according to papers  released by the New York State Supreme Court. The Rosneft deal, priced […]