By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

“We will not abandon the Cuban people in their time of need,” Russia’s Energy Minister, Sergei Tsivilev, announced three months ago to the day.    

“A Russian vessel [Anatoly Kolodkin] has broken through the blockade. Now a second one is being loaded. We won’t leave the Cubans hanging,” he told an energy industry conference in Kazan on April 2.  

A week later in Havana, a Russian ministerial delegation announced that Russia was planning to do more to defend Cuba from the US blockade than shipping crude oil and petroleum products.  “The issue of ensuring the island’s energy security is a priority,” said Sergei Ryabkov, first deputy foreign minister. “But it’s too early to say what the next steps will be. It is well known that we generally do not limit ourselves to the supply of that batch of oil that has already arrived on the island on the tanker Anatoly Kolodkin.”   “We don’t focus on protocol, on decorative aspects in our relations, but purely on the specifics of the tasks that we face. This is what our leaders are aiming at, and the Cuban president was as specific as possible in today’s conversation.”   

By then the state shipping company Sovcomflot’s tanker Universal had loaded a 30,000-tonne cargo of petroleum products at Ust Luga and Primorsk, and then headed towards Cuba. Through the English Channel and into the Atlantic, it was escorted by a Russian Navy frigate.  

But the Universal never reached Cuba.

Instead, it remained adrift in the Sargasso Sea of the North Atlantic until it turned, not west towards Cuba but south to Brazil. It then entered the Amazon River and reached Manaus on June 21.  The Universal had been left hanging for two months. No Russian crude oil, diesel,  or other petroleum products have crossed the US blockade to reach Cuba except for the first, the Kolodkin, on March 31.

Delivering 730,000 barrels of crude  oil,  the Kolodkin was the second Russian attempt to run Trump’s gauntlet. By the time it had unloaded and its crude refined into diesel, the new supplies lasted for about two weeks. The Sea Horse, Hong Kong-flagged and loaded with 200,000 barrels of Russian diesel transferred from another vessel off Cyprus in the Mediterranean,  had approached Cuba on February 25. However, it was then diverted on Moscow’s orders to Venezuela.   

Who has been giving the orders in Moscow?

Not Tsivilev at the Energy Ministry, not Lavrov at the Foreign Ministry.

On June 3, Lavrov’s deputy in charge of Latin America, Alexander Shchetinin, announced to the press that “we are engaged in the closest collegial cooperation with our Cuban friends. Undoubtedly, we coordinate the steps that need to be taken in the difficult situation they are currently dealing with. Cuba certainly remains our partner and friend, and we continue to provide political support to the country,”   Shchetinin was choosing his adjectives carefully. Political support there was – no more.

The state media revealed how little Putin had decided to do for Cuba when he was in Astana, Kazakhstan, a few days before, for the summit meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU); Cuba is an official participant in the EAEU as an observer; in Astana it was represented by Vice President, Salvador Valdés Mesa. Putin refused to meet him in one of several sideline talks the Kremlin records Putin held with others.  

Instead, Pavel Zarubin, a state television artificial intelligence, was told to make a video record of a “brief conversation with a Cuban delegation.” According to Tass, “the video shows the Russian leader coming up to the representatives of the Cuban delegation, exchanging a couple of words and shaking hands with them.”  

Putin had said more on February 18 when he met the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, in the Kremlin. Lavrov was the senior minister at the table; Igor Sechin, head of the state oil company Rosneft, was also there. Putin told Rodriguez for the record: “We have always stood by Cuba in its struggle for independence, for the right to pursue its own path of development, and we have consistently supported the Cuban people…We are now witnessing a particular period marked by new sanctions. You know our stance on this – we reject such measures outright. The position of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs is clear, unequivocal, and has been articulated openly.”  

What Putin meant was that Lavrov would do the talking against Trump’s sanctions, and Sechin would send the oil to break the blockade. But Putin’s secret orders to them were different.

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by Editor - Thursday, July 2nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Russia’s escalation options for ending the war on the original terms of the Special Military Operation of February 2022 are now too little, too late.

This is because demilitarization of the Ukrainian battlefield cannot stop or deter the rearmament of the NATO allies for permanent war against Russia.

Nor can denazification of the Kiev regime succeed when the NATO allies have become nazified, like the Trump regime in Washington. Militarization and nazification have become US empire  war aims against Russia. They are highly profitable ones for President Donald Trump, his family and associates, and for the military-industrial complexes, the banks, the stock, betting and crypto markets,  and election financing machines of the US in league with the Germans, French, and British.  

They are planning the permanent war future in which the territorial concessions Putin agreed to in Anchorage a year ago – Crimea and the four Novorussian regions in exchange for a US guarantee of Russia’s security in Europe – will not produce the “the security of our country and our citizens, and the inviolability of Russia’s borders for decades ahead”. That was Putin’s promise to Russian voters in his first election campaign rally early this week (June 28).  

The President then admitted the negative in an evening interview with Pavel Zarubin (lead image, left), a reporter favoured by the Kremlin for his artificial intelligence.  

“As for the attacks on critical infrastructure in general and energy infrastructure in particular,” Putin said, “they are, of course, creating problems. That is obvious. We are currently seeing certain shortages, although they are not critical, as I will explain. There are several tasks we need to address, and we have just discussed them.”  

That discussion was at Putin’s meeting an hour earlier with the oil oligarchs and government ministers.   

With the reporter, Putin also acknowledged “the strikes on our civilian infrastructure are intended not only to inflict damage on us – although I believe that is certainly one of the enemy’s objectives – but also to fuel an information campaign, or perhaps more accurately, an information operation as part of the broader confrontation with Russia. At a minimum, its purpose is to undermine our confidence in ourselves and our capabilities and, ideally, to create divisions within Russian society, force Russia to suspend, even temporarily, the advance of our forces along the line of contact and create conditions for launching negotiations on terms favourable to our adversary.We will not give them that opportunity. It is all the more important to understand that these terrorist attacks have no impact whatsoever on the situation at the front.”  

Putin also disclosed the new variants of the Anchorage formula which Kirill Dmitriev has relayed from Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner: “One is that both sides should stop carrying out long-range strikes deep inside each other’s territory. The reason for this proposal is obvious. Our retaliatory strikes deep inside Ukrainian territory are far more powerful, more effective and, frankly, more destructive, resulting in genuinely serious consequences for the Kiev regime. Another proposal is to limit military operations – please note this carefully – to just four territories: the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, while halting hostilities everywhere else.”

So what is the end-of-war plan now?

“Our primary objective [is] the final liberation of Donbass and Novorossiya,” Putin continued. “We know that the West continues to pursue Russia’s strategic defeat. There have been occasional suggestions that this is no longer the case, but officially no one has abandoned that objective. The goal remains Russia’s strategic defeat.  If that is so, then why are they calling for a ceasefire and peace negotiations, and increasingly expressing a desire to take part in them?  If Ukraine is, as they claim, capturing more and more territory and liberating it – in other words, if it is winning – then Western leaders simply need to wait. Russia’s strategic defeat would, it would seem, come about of its own accord. So let them wait. Meanwhile, our troops will continue doing their job and will do everything necessary to achieve the objectives of the special military operation.”  

Does Putin end up admitting what the critics of his trust-in-Trump strategy have been saying, but at the same time remaining fixed where he was, and intends to remain?

In the podcast on Wednesday evening (July 1), Jamarl Thomas asks the questions Zarubin didn’t ask and Putin didn’t answer. Click to view or listen:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FBbvrc0S6U

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by Editor - Wednesday, July 1st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Of the many questions we have been asking during this war, here’s a new one. A double-barreled one.

What will it take for the Kremlin to ensure that the outcome of Russian votes at the national parliamentary election on September 18-20 will be a majority for the ruling United Russia party against the Communist Party and other opposition forces? What will it take for the US, NATO, and the Ukraine to trigger the postponement of the election or election fraud too visible to preserve Russian voter confidence in Putin?  

Asked on June 25 if he thinks the Zelensky regime in Kiev “is winning right now”, President Donald Trump answered: “he’s doing pretty well. Look, no matter how you look at it, he’s doing pretty well. He’s holding his own at least. A lot of people dying on both sides, but I think he’s doing pretty well. Can I ask you — you have to say he’s courageous. He’s got great equipment, but he’s got great men. He’s got fighters.”  

Trump added about Putin: “you could say that Vladimir has some other things to focus on.” 

Three days later, at the first election rally of the State Duma election campaign, Putin replied: “We see and realise our problems – we also respond to them. We will absolutely ensure the security of our country and our citizens, and the inviolability of Russia’s borders for decades ahead. This is our ultimate goal. We will certainly handle all the challenges we are facing today…including terrorist attacks on our territory and our infrastructure. We will also solve any domestic development issues – primarily demographic issues, the preservation of our traditional values, and improving the quality of life and living standards in all the regions of our immense country…”   

“In September, the ninth convocation of the State Duma will be formed. In many regions, large-scale election campaigns for legislative and representative authorities will also take place, and their composition will be updated. The elections will be held within the established timeframe, in strict correspondence with the law, and all measures will be taken to ensure the safety of election commission members, candidates, observers, and electors, as well as to protect the results of the people’s vote from any attempts at external influence or manipulation. The necessary instructions in this regard have been formulated and will certainly be issued.”

“I am certain that competition will be open and honest – after all, our people’s trust in our democratic institutions constitutes the essential condition of our society’s stability and unity. The electoral process is a test of strength for our political system and an immensely important step for the country’s development, as well as the strengthening of its stability and public accord.”  

“We realise our problems” – that’s the Russian President’s public acknowledgement of the obvious. It’s not a victory exclamation mark, nor an end-of-war formula as Putin and his officials have been insisting they got from Trump at the Anchorage, Alaska, summit a year ago.  

That, declared US Secretary of State Marco Rubion on June 25, was Putin’s “proposal…but there was no agreement in Alaska.  If there had been an agreement, we would have had an end to the war.  So as I said, the President is prepared, as the United States remains prepared, to play whatever constructive role we can to bring about an enduring end to this war in Ukraine, and which has been bloody – 25 – 20,000 soldiers killed every month; 5,000 a week, most of them Russian.  So it’s been debilitating for Europe, for the – but especially for Ukraine and for Russia increasingly.”  

What Rubio meant by increasing the “debilitation” for Russia is what he called the “constructive role we can bring about”. This isn’t new – it has been US empire strategy since the November 1917 revolution; since the German invasion of June 1941; since the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki in August 1945; since the execution of the Rosenbergs in June 1953; since the Kiev putsch of February 2014. They weren’t pinpricks then. The Trump-Zelensky drone war against Russia in the hinterland and on the high seas isn’t pinpricks now.   

This is so far from the Putin line, promoted daily in tweeting by Putin’s negotiator with the Trump family, Kirill Dmitriev, he has been uncharacteristically struck dumb.  That’s dumb as: “If only EU governments were capable of acknowledging and correcting their mistakes, there would be much more hope for Europe”.   “Merz and Germany stand united in defeat, and that is what makes them strong — just paraphrasing Chancellor Merz or whoever writes these embarrassing soccer tweets for him.  If they cannot get soccer tweets, immigration, energy, or the economy right, what can they do?”  

In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, we go beyond the punctuation marks to the facts on the battlefields and at the negotiating tables. Click to listen or view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQiDaQ8PZU

by Editor - Tuesday, June 30th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

“Your Excellency, I would like to also thank you,” Shehbaz Sharif said to President Vladimir Putin (lead image) last September, “for supporting Pakistan and trying to have a balancing act in the region.”   

Sharif is his country’s spokesman prime minister. Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistan’s military ruler, was sitting in the third protocol seat on Sharif’s right side, opposite Putin’s foreign policy spokesman, Yury Ushakov.

Munir is one of President Donald Trump’s closest Asian allies and personal supporters.   If he said anything in the meeting with Putin, it has not been reported publicly.  Putin was briefed to understand, nonetheless,  that inside Pakistan, there can be no balancing act for Sharif – he is under Munir’s control; and that between Pakistan and the US, there can be no balancing act for Munir – he is under US control.

This was explained discreetly by Putin’s Defense Minister, Andrei Belousov, in April last year. The Americans, Belousov said, “are seeking to transform the regional security system into an American-centric one by strengthening Washington-controlled military and political structures. Such actions provoke tension, undermine regional stability, and increase the risks of armed conflicts…We are closely monitoring the attempts of extra-regional states to ensure military presence and logistical missions in Central Asia. We consider this unacceptable.”

Unacceptable at the table is one thing – Belousov didn’t say what Russia is going to do about it in the field. Last March, for example, just after the US and Israel had launched new attacks and resumed their war on  Iran, Russian and Pakistani officials confirmed Sharif was about to make his first visit to Moscow. Following US consultations Munir ordered the visit cancelled.  

Sergei Shoigu – Defense Minister until he was removed in 2024 for corruption and now Secretary of the Security Council – said more last month: “Our fundamental approach is that the United States and its allies must acknowledge full responsibility for their 20-year presence in Afghanistan and assume the main burden of its post-conflict reconstruction. We consider the return of third-country military infrastructure to Afghanistan or the deployment of new military facilities in neighbouring states unacceptable.”   

Shoigu meant that at Munir’s direction, the US is planning to deploy “new military facilities” in Pakistan. By that, Russian military intelligence means covert and overt US war capacities and operational plans in Pakistan to target Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India and China in the east. .

Meaning this much at the table is one thing – what Putin is doing, according to the Pakistanis, is trying to perform a balancing act.

Putin, Belousov, Shoigu, the intelligence chiefs, and the General Staff were all educated to understand that because the material world is dialectical,   it is impossible to balance between contradictions – they will always resolve themselves one way or another. Putin’s balancing act, interpreted on the Russian side dialectically, is to make sure he is either on the winning side or never on the losing side. When Putin has put himself on the brink of the latter, the General Staff have told him “We told you so” (MVG — Мы же вам говорили).  Starting at the US putsch in Kiev in February 2014 and the threatened capture of Russia’s naval base at Sevastopol, the MVG is message has been delivered many times, and continues to be delivered.

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by Editor - Monday, June 29th, 2026
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By Pelle Neroth Taylor in Stockholm, introduced by John Helmer
  @bears_with

There is almost no point in explaining, example after example, why President Vladimir Putin is mistaken in his understanding of how to deal with the propaganda war of the western world against Russia. Click.  

This is because he demonstrates his refusal to learn by continuing to pay and believe his chief propagandists in Moscow (no names) and those in the western media whom they pay (no names). Click again  and again.  

Almost no point, I said.

What remains of the point is the human right, not just to speak, assemble and publish, but to think first. This — this is the moral duty of the free-thinking person. It’s a duty that comes before religion (including religions of national superiority, no names) because faith ought to follow after thinking, oughtn’t it? If not, faith is a childish mistake, compounded for grownups by the compelling force of state power and the beguiling subversions of class and cash.   

There’s nothing in the US Bill of Rights and Constitution to protect thinking, let alone to  require it.  In fact, Article 1 of the Bill and the First Amendment explicitly put the freedom of religion first and foremost, and assign faith superiority over the freedoms to speak and to assemble.   This superiority is a constitutional guarantee for lying, propaganda, brainwashing, information warfare. At least in the law-abiding United States.

Incapacity to think, unwillingness to tell the difference between true and false, mental impairment – these aren’t terms required for the removal of a US president according to the 25^th Amendment of the Constitution. The amendment is a political subterfuge – it has kept Ronald Reagan, Joseph Biden, Donald Trump safely in office.

And so we come to this analysis of the success of the Swedish lie exposed in every respect by Pelle Neroth Taylor.

Read it and think. Think and read it again because the same lie operation is succeeding against you, wherever you are.

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by Editor - Saturday, June 27th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the new Reason2Resist podcast, Dimitri Lascaris and I discuss the operational mistakes and strategic misjudgements which President Vladimir and his spokesman are making, as they reveal  in  statements this week their interpretations of the new Ukrainian drone  attacks, and the role the US is playing in encouraging them and guiding them on to target. Click to view or listen.

The evidence presented in the podcast can be investigated as follows.

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by Editor - Thursday, June 25th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When President Donald Trump (lead image, 3^rd left) announced the resignation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer (right) to make sure he would announce it himself without delay, he threw overboard the special relationship. He also declared that British foreign and domestic policy is to become – already has become — a colonial one.

In the history of British empire that hasn’t happened for almost two thousand years. Not since the Roman Emperor Claudius, accompanied by 40,000 troops, declared the island a province of his empire in 43 AD, and Emperor Hadrian followed in 122, ordering the construction of his defensive wall against the Pictish north. Today, Trump has pushed further northwards than the Romans; bought the rebellious Picts off; and constructed a golf course 230 miles north of Hadrian’s Wall.

“The special relationship is in operation right now,” Starmer had claimed in March. “We are ​working together in the region, the U.S. and the British working together to protect both the ​U.S. and the British in joint bases, where we’re jointly located and we’re sharing intelligence on a 24/7 basis in the usual way.” / 

Trump began declaring otherwise when he issued Starmer his first marching order on the Indian Ocean island base of Diego Garcia in February.

“Our relationship with the United Kingdom is a strong and powerful one,” Trump tweeted, “and it has been for many years, but Prime Minister Starmer is losing control of this important Island by claims of entities never known of before. In our opinion, they are fictitious in nature. Should Iran decide not to make a Deal, it may be necessary for the United States to use Diego Garcia, and the Airfield located in Fairford, in order to eradicate a potential attack by a highly unstable and dangerous Regime — An attack that would potentially be made on the United Kingdom, as well as other friendly Countries. Prime Minister Starmer should not lose control, for any reason, of Diego Garcia, by entering a tenuous, at best, 100 Year Lease. This land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally. We will always be ready, willing, and able to fight for the U.K., but they have to remain strong in the face of Wokeism, and other problems put before them. DO NOT GIVE AWAY DIEGO GARCIA!”  

A month later, replying to Starmer’s special relationship fealty pledge, Trump said: “The United Kingdom, our once Great Ally, maybe the Greatest of them all, is finally giving serious thought to sending two aircraft carriers to the Middle East. That’s OK, Prime Minister Starmer, we don’t need them any longer — But we will remember. We don’t need people that join Wars after we’ve already won!”  

In April, Trump told Starmer he should not have sent Peter Mandelson to Washington as UK ambassador. “He ‘exercised wrong judgement’ when he chose his Ambassador to Washington. I agree, he was a really bad pick. Plenty of time to recover, however!”  

Then on the advice of his banker and election financier Warren Stephens, the President’s ambassador in London,  Trump decided that recovery time for Starmer had run out.  He demanded he walk the plank. “Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of The United Kingdom. He failed badly on two very important subjects- IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY (OPEN NORTH SEA OIL!). I wish him well!”  

Starmer’s replacement is now a bidding contest for all aspiring British party politicians to receive Trump’s favour to take power in the next election; that must be held within three years, by August 2029.

In British voter polling of their party and prime ministerial preferences, this makes Trump more popular than Starmer of the Labour Party and Nigel Farage of the Reform Party.  Actually, at minus 64 percentage points Trump  is relatively less unpopular than Starmer and Farage.  He is still ahead, negatively speaking,  of former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn;  he is trailing behind Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader.

By this measure, King Charles III is the frontrunner in the colony. He has a net favourability rating of plus 26%.    “The King and Queen got me to do something that nobody else was able to do, without hardly even asking,” Trump patronised the monarch on April 30. “In Honor of the King and Queen of the United Kingdom, who have just left the White House, soon headed back to their wonderful Country, I will be removing the Tariffs and Restrictions on Whiskey having to do with Scotland’s ability to work with the Commonwealth of Kentucky on Whiskey and Bourbon, two very important Industries within Scotland and Kentucky. People have wanted to do this for a long time, in that there had been great Inter-Country Trade, especially having to do with the Wooden Barrels used.”  

Wooden barrels for 2026 to send the same American message that teachests had in 1773.

Trailing far behind Charles III, Starmer’s likely successor, Andrew Burnham, former mayor of Greater Manchester, is starting at plus 4%.   That is so low, the empire pollsters in the White House and CIA are calculating, that Burnham will have to follow the Trump line on boosting British defence spending  on US arms procurement; on joining the permanent war against Iran; and on defending the US-Israeli genocide and redevelopment plan for Gaza.

Burnham has already made a record of his subservience on each of these issues. Click to view here, and here,  and here.   In the new podcast with Pelle Neroth Taylor (London) and Martin Sieff (Washington), we discuss the dire straits for the British and the Hormuz Strait for the Americans and Russians. Click to view or listen.

by Editor - Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There is a mistake that warfighters sometimes make, and that wartalkers – diplomats, academics, journalists, podcasters  – always make.

That’s the mistake which Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian staff officer and mercenary against France,  made when he repeatedly told his superiors (between 1816 and 1832) that “war is no more than the continuation of  politics by other means” (Der Krieg ist eine bloße Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).  

This was —  still is —  the line which small and middle-sized kings, states,  and armies think when they are up against empires with bigger guns and more men than they have. Clausewitz’s dictum is the wishful thinking of wannabe imperialists. It’s the  lullaby — Star light, star bright/First star I see tonight/I wish I may, I wish I might/Have this wish I wish tonight. How comforting that is for children to hear — how delusional for grownups  to believe.

The dictum of real empires and genuine imperialists is the opposite – politics, for them, is no more than the continuation of war by other means. War is an end in itself because force kills argument and resistance;  genocide kills everybody; and politics has no deterrent effect to stop either. Politics —  that’s to say talking, negotiation, diplomacy, bribery, propaganda, podcasts – is a trap which emperors and their staffs set for persuading their targets to mistake the empire’s schemes for their own interests and subverting their judgements into compliance. But if and when persuasion fails, there must always be the force of killing.

Killing comes first.  JD Vance, the  Republican Party candidate to succeeed President Donald Trump, is demonstrating how this works in the talking he has led with Iran – plus Qatar and Pakistan – to achieve the US war aims in the Middle East.

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On Friday (June 19), the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), Elvira Nabiullina, returned from a three-week silence and absence from office that was due, she claimed, to a “cold” and the “loss of my voice”.  

The anti-Russia propaganda platform, Financial Times of London, reported three people in the know as calling her ailment “a severe respiratory infection”. There is a deeper malaise, the newspaper added – Nabiullina is fighting on one side of the Kremlin “splits over how to manage the strains in Vladimir Putin’s wartime economy.”

Tass, RT, Sputnik, and other Russian state media have omitted to report Nabiullina’s ailment and the Kremlin malaise.   

According to four people in the know, Nabiullina has been telling Putin that she opposes increased state budget spending on fighting the war to a conclusion on Russian terms; and that at the CBR she will continue to keep up the key interest rate in order to lower inflation and cut the budget deficit.

Whether she threatened to resign ahead of term next June if Putin did not allow her to get her way is not known for certain.

Against Nabiullina’s faction of anti-war advisers, which includes the Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and the special negotiator with the Trump White House, Kirill Dmitriev, there are the majority of the Security Council; the General Staff and its intelligence chief, Admiral Igor Kostyukov;  and the Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. They have repeatedly and publicly signaled their advice to Putin to escalate on the battlefield with “systemic and consistent” attacks  because the trust-in-Trump (TiT) line has failed to deliver an end-of-war settlement guaranteeing Russian security.

Both Medvedev and Lavrov have publicly declared that Trump’s August 2025 “Anchorage formula” for the security guarantee has proved to be empty deceit. “It’s time to openly declare that there are no more rules regarding neo-Nazi Kiev and there can’t be any”, Medvedev has reportedly declared.   “Everything now depends not on negotiations but on what our frontline heroes are doing,” Lavrov announced on June 8.  

Yury Ushakov, the president’s spokesman for the trust-in-Trump line, announced on Sunday (June 21): “Russia does not expect the implementation of the agreements reached in Anchorage, but counts on the victory and the implementation of its own goals…Only one of the parties [Putin] adheres to the agreements today. Another [Trump] was not quite able to go through his part.”  

At the same time as Putin authorized Ushakov to issue this signal, he also authorized Nabiullina to give a contradictory one.  

At a meeting of government ministers in Nabiullina’s absence on June 10, Putin had claimed: “Overall, the [domestic economic] situation is under control – that much is quite obvious. And the measures we have taken are yielding the expected results. In fact, the inflation rate has declined. Where are we at this point? It is slightly over five percent. Therefore, I believe that we can expect a lower key interest rate and to be able to achieve other key indicators.”   

That was the marching order for Nabiullina to lower the CBR’s key rate. But then on Friday (June 19)  she announced the smallest possible reduction in the rate – twenty-five basis points – and threatened to raise it again between now and the national parliamentary election on September 18-20.  

“On 19 June 2026, the Bank of Russia Board of Directors decided to cut the key rate by 25 basis points to 14.25% per annum,” Nabiullina’s press office said. “The underlying price growth has edged down but remains generally in the range of 4–5% in annualised terms…Lending growth has accelerated in recent months. Fiscal policy over the three-year horizon will be more accommodative than previously expected. This may require a higher key rate path than assumed in the April baseline scenario.”

By “accommodative” Nabiullina meant to rebuke Putin for refusing to cut the war budget or social welfare spending during the election campaign.

Nabiullina repeated for the press the threat that she might not take the President’s orders in the future. “I would like to emphasise that neither a further key rate cut nor the size of it is predetermined at any particular meeting. We might need to take pauses to analyse all incoming information and the effect of our earlier decisions. It is only by maintaining a balanced approach, especially amid high uncertainty.”  

This was her riposte to Putin’s announcement of the week before that he wants an increase in government spending and therefore an increase in the budget deficit. “Mr Siluanov talked about the budget,” Putin said. ”It goes without saying that we must launch a new investment cycle taking into consideration present-day reality, as well as the proposals we have just heard from the business community. I think that this much is obvious.”  

The clash between the factions over the CBR’s key rate has been public in Moscow for months (years ).  Not quite public, but not secret, is Nabiullina’s attempts to manipulate both monetary and fiscal policy to bring the Ukraine war to an end on the US and NATO terms.  

Still hidden, however, is Nabiullina’s attempt to sabotage Russian military and financial assistance to Iran in the war against the US and Israel.

Last week, the Iranian Central Bank Governor, Abdolnasser Hemmati, was in Moscow with a delegation of experts to discuss measures to protect rouble-rial reserves and trade payments from US and European sanctions, and to enable a substantial increase in Russian financial assistance to the embattled government in Teheran.  That assistance now includes a Russian loan of up to $20 billion in roubles.

The agenda for these negotiations was announced in the Iranian and Turkish state media; they have followed up with detailed reports of the outcomes agreed so far.

In contrast, the CBR press office has imposed a blackout on the meetings; the Russian media have remained silent. Asked to confirm which CBR officials Hemmati met last week in Moscow, and what they have agreed to do, Nabiullina’s press spokesman refused to answer.

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by Editor - Sunday, June 21st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

US Vice President JD Vance, a Roman Catholic, has launched his presidential campaign for 2028 with the sharpest attack ever made on Israel and the Jewish bloc around President Donald Trump.

He has also promised American voters their pockets are about to start filling up as their gas tank costs less at the pump. “The fact that you’ve seen gas come down about 65 cents a gallon on the national average,…I think you’re going to see a substantial reduction in gas prices…you’re going to see significant relief at the pump on top of what we’ve already seen.”

“Praise Jesus” he declared in the White House Briefing Room.  

“You’re a country of nine million people,” Vance warned Israel and its supporters in an interview which followed in the New York Times. “You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”

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by Editor - Thursday, June 18th, 2026
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