By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

At about noon, Moscow time, on Friday February 27, the Russian Security Council met in a video session. The regular weekly meeting of the Council is often at the end of the week.   

The Foreign and Defense Ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Andrei Belousov,  and the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, participated.  Unless Russian intelligence had suffered an unprecedented and catastrophic failure, the Russian decision-makers knew that the US and Israel were about to launch their new war against Iran.

The Kremlin communique of the meeting posted at 13:50 said:  “The discussion focused on steps needed to strengthen the constitutional order. Justice Minister Konstantin Chuichenko delivered the report.”  

President Vladimir Putin and the Security Council agreed not to say anything about the situation in Iran.

The next day, Saturday February 28 at 13:54 the Russian Foreign Ministry announced what it had known in advance: “The scope and character of the military, political, and propaganda preparations that preceded this reckless step, including the deployment of substantial US military forces to the region, leave no doubt that this is a deliberate, premeditated, and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state, in direct violation of the fundamental principles and norms of international law.”  

An hour later  Lavrov telephoned Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi. By then the daylight attacks on Teheran and other targets around Iran had been under way since about 07:40 Moscow time — for more than five hours. Lavrov and the Kremlin already knew the  strikes had targeted the compounds of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian, the Iranian Security Council and military leaders.

The public disclosure said: “The Iranian minister briefed Sergei Lavrov on IRI [sic] leadership’s steps to repel the aggression by the United States and Israel, which had once again derailed talks on peaceful settlement of the issues concerning Iran’s nuclear programme. He informed Sergei Lavrov about the plans to convene an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council. Sergei Lavrov condemned the absolutely unprovoked armed attack by the United States and Israel on Iran in violation of principles and standards of international law while totally ignoring hard repercussions for the regional and global stability and security. He pointed out the need to promptly stop the attacks against the Islamic Republic.”  The communiqué was posted at 15:06.

An hour later the Security Council was meeting again, also by video, not face to face. The Kremlin posted the brief notice at 16:30: “The situation surrounding Iran was on the agenda.” At exactly the same time, the state news agency Tass reported Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying “the meeting participants discussed the situation around Iran.”  

At 19:15, the Foreign Ministry posted the announcement that Lavrov had telephoned the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar,  Mohammed Al Thani. Referring to the US use of Qatar territory for the ongoing attacks, and the Iranian counter-attack, the communiqué said: “it is necessary that all the sides fully take into account the legitimate interests of the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. Sergei Lavrov has reaffirmed the well-known Russian initiative on building a collective security architecture of in the Gulf area.”  

Twenty-four hours passed; Saturday turned into Sunday.

At noon, Moscow time,  Putin announced that he had sent Pezeshkian a message without speaking directly: “Please, accept my deepest condolences on the assassination of Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran Seyyed Ali Khamenei and members of his family, committed in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law. In our country, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei will be remembered as an outstanding statesman who made an enormous personal contribution to the development of friendly ties between Russia and Iran and to raising them to the level of a comprehensive strategic partnership. Please, convey my most sincere sympathy and support to the family and friends of the Supreme Leader, as well as to the leadership and to the entire people of Iran.”  

Five hours later at 17:11, the Foreign Ministry announced  it had “received the news of the killing of the Supreme and Spiritual Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, members of his family, and senior Iranian officials in US and Israeli missile strikes with outrage and deep sorrow. The Russian Federation strongly and consistently condemns the practice of political assassination and manhunt for leaders of sovereign states that goes against the fundamental principles of civilised interstate relations and constitutes a grave violation of international law.”  

The Ministry also noted: “Retaliation strikes at the US military bases in the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, along with the activation of anti-aircraft defence systems, have caused damage to the international airports in Dubai, Kuwait City, sea ports, high-rises and hotels in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. It has been reported that navigation has been stopped in the Strait of Hormuz. This can lead to the blocking of hydrocarbon exports to the region and create a significant imbalance in the global oil and gas markets. We call for immediate de-escalation, cessation of hostilities, resumption of political and diplomatic processes, to settle any existing problems on the basis of the UN Charter and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The legitimate interests of all the states in the Persian Gulf must be taken into account.”  

At 18:21 Lavrov telephoned China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The Russian report said they “highlighted the unity of Moscow’s and Beijing’s positions…They expressed their readiness to continue working together to help stabilise the situation”. They “condemned the large-scale military strikes launched by the United States and Israel against Iranian territory… They stressed that such acts of aggression represent a grave violation of international law and the fundamental principles of the UN Charter.”

In the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s version, it was noted that Lavrov had requested the call, not the other way round, nor by reciprocal agreement.

“China,” declared Wang, “has consistently upheld the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and opposed the use of force in international relations. It is unacceptable for the United States and Israel to launch strikes on Iran during the Iran-U.S. negotiations… it is also unacceptable for them to blatantly kill the leader of a sovereign state and incite government change…these actions violate international law and basic norms of international relations.”  

Wang proposed, according to the communiqué, “an immediate cessation of military operations. Prevent the spread and spillover of war and prevent the situation from getting out of control. China attaches great importance to the security of Gulf countries and supports them in exercising restraint.”

by Editor - Sunday, March 1st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In order to understand what Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar did in Israel, start by reading Modi’s Knesset speech here.  

Then calculate the weight of these Indian numbers:
– There are 1.4 billion Indians; the Jews of India count for less than 5,000.
– The number of foreign tourists to India last year came to 9 million; the number of Israeli tourists,  80,000.
– The Hindu population of India comprises a majority of 80%; the Muslims of India, 14%. The Hindi-speaking population of India is a minority of  44%; the non-Hindi speakers, a majority of 56%.
– Voter support for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is weakest in the south of India where the five  most powerful states – West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, and Kerala – have a total population of  360 million — one-quarter of the electorate. With the exception of Kerala, which has a Communist Party government, these states have significantly higher GDP and per capita growth rates than the northern states where support for Modi is highest.
– The only state leaders to publicly criticise Modi’s new alliance with Israel are Kerala in the west and Bihar in the east.  
– The Indian economy is more dependent on export of goods and services now than it was 25 years ago. In 2000 exports of goods and services amounted to 13% of India’s GDP; in 2024 they came to 22%.  This is less export-dependent than Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia; roughly equal to Russia, China and Indonesia; and more dependent than the US.  
– The dependency of the Indian economy on imported oil is currently 89%. Only the European Union (95%), Japan (90%), South Korea (90%), and Australia (90%) are more dependent.
– To replace the imports of Russian oil which India is cutting down at the demand of the Trump Adminstration, the replacement oil will come from Saudi Arabia, UAE and Iraq. More than half of India’s oil imports must transit the Strait of Hormuz.
– The top five countries supplying arms and military systems to India are, in order of magnitude,  Russia (36%), France, US, Israel, and South Korea.
– There are only three Indian arms makers in the world’s top-100 by size of revenue – they are Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics, and  Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders. They rank 44^th, 58^th and 91^st on the global table. Israel’s top-3 arms makers rank far ahead; their combined revenues are more than double the top-3 Indian companies.  
– Hindustan Aeronautics, Bharat Electronics and Mazagon are state-owned and managed. The leading privately owned Indian arms builders – Tata, Adani and Ambani – are financial backers of the BJP.

In military terms Modi’s alliance with Netanyahu anticipates the privatization of India’s military-industrial complex.

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by Editor - Friday, February 27th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin has an STD problem, according to sources in a position to know.

That’s Succession Testing Day – September 20, when Russian voters will go to the polls to elect a new State Duma. Between then and now, Kremlin political strategists believe they must stop the downward decline they are seeing in their polling measurements of approval for Putin’s performance, and of deeper declines which voters are registering in their approval of the prime minister, the government, the regional governors, and worst of all, the State Duma.

Through January, the independent pollster Levada is reporting declines of three to seven  percentage points for these national voter targets.  The Kremlin polls are more frequent, more precise – but secret.

Reading these polls, Putin and his advisors agree that for him to arrange a consensus successor, an orderly succession, and a secure retirement for himself, his closest associates and supporters between now and the start of the presidential campaign in 2029, there should be no rise in voter opposition, no appearance of an uncontrolled presidential candidate, no requirement for increased repression.

The politics and economics of these requirements is no recession this year or next;  no increase in war casualties; no troop mobilization; no lasting drone and missile damage to the trains and planes running on time and to the supply and price of petrol at car pumps for the summer driving season; no spread of urban terrorism.

 “In general, how would you assess the political situation in Russia?” In the Levada poll index of positive and negative answers to this question across the country, the index reached its maximum positive level of 143 just before the economic crash of 2008. In 2022 the index halved, dropping from 82 before the Special Military Operation began to 46 at mid-year. Confidence recovered by 2024 but it has been volatile since then. Over the past three months it has lost more than 10 points on the Levada scale.  

In the Kremlin polling, confidence in the political situation correlates closely with confidence in Putin and confidence in the Army. Putin’s campaign strategy accordingly requires acceleration of victory on the Ukrainian battlefield.

Moscow sources in a position to know say they are not confident that, even with the escalation of the General Staff’s  ground advance in the east of the Ukrainian battlefield and the electric war campaign in the west, the Zelensky regime will capitulate soon.

“ ‘By spring?’ ‘No.’

“ ‘How much more time?’ ‘Let’s see.’”

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 25th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Before the last of the great Arab strategists was murdered by the Americans, British and French – that was Muammar Qaddafi in October 2011 – he met with an Indian delegation at Sirte, in the Libyan desert.

This is what the Indians recorded Qaddafi telling them: “Imperialism does not want India as a strong nation. Imperialists are trying to divide India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to create mini states there, and create rivalries among them. There is no reason that could lead to a war between India and Pakistan as the boundaries are known, but plots are continuing to engage them into war. Israel and United States want to see both India and Pakistan destroyed. US nowadays is pushing Israel to have a close relationship with India. Of course, Israel is not going to give any appreciable help as it does not like Indians. Israel is inciting India against Pakistan and vice versa. We know the role of the US and Israel. They did same thing during Iran-Iraq war. US was supportive of Iraq to oust Khomeini, while Israel was supplying arms to Iran. Now Israel and US are in agreement to destroy both India and Pakistan.”  

Until recently,  there were enough Indian military, intelligence and political advisors moving in person or on paper  in and out of Seva Teerth  to caution Prime Minister Narendra Modi (lead image) against his making public display of “the enduring friendship with Israel, built on trust, innovation, and a shared commitment to peace and progress” – the banner with which Modi announced his visit to Israel today.  

Even they did not dare cite Qaddafi. But that was in December when Modi cancelled the “solidarity” visit to Delhi of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  

This week, however, the traditional balance in Indian foreign policy between the Arab states, Iran,  and Israel, and the cautious balance of power in Delhi has changed, as Modi has tweeted. He will have more to add when he speaks to the Knesset. Modi has made ceremonial addresses to the parliaments of seventeen states since he won the prime ministry in 2014; each of them either hosts a large Indian diaspora or has co-signed a strategic partnership pact with India.   

Until now there has been neither with Israel.

In this podcast with Pelle Neroth Taylor in Stockholm and Martin Sieff in Washington, the evidence is presented that Modi’s trip to Israel is the strategic trap which Qaddafi explained twenty years ago.  View or listen by clicking.

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 25th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Imperialism in the mind happens when a superiority complex turns into a national pathology of racial supremacism and is carved into stone tablets as the constitution of the Chosen People, Make American Great Again, the Final Solution, etc. It always comes a cropper.

Almost two and half thousand years ago, the expanding Athenian empire at war with the resisting Sparta tried to convince the neutral islanders of Melos to surrender and survive, or face their total destruction. The negotiation of this choice between the two sides has been retold in just thirty-two paragraphs of Thucydides’ History of Peloponnesian War.

This is best remembered in the Athenian advice to the Melians to be realistic about their chances. “You know as well as we do that when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the quality of power to compel, and that in fact the strong do what they can and the weak accept what they must.” Because the Melians refused to submit, what followed was genocide – the Athens killed every adult male and enslaved the women and children.

There are several less well-known paragraphs in which the Athenians justified their life-or-death offer, and the genocide to come. “We rule the sea,” the Athenians said, “and you are islanders, and weaker islanders too than the others; it is therefore particularly important that you should not escape.” This is genocide for its exemplary effect – not to limit resistance to imperial power on the part of the weak but instead to remove all hope in the endurance of the weak by destroying hope and life together.  

“If one already has solid advantages to fall back upon, one can indulge in hope. It may do harm but will not destroy one. But hope is by nature an expensive commodity and those who are risking all on one cast find out only what it means only when they are already ruined.” Genocide is meant to extinguish all hope by extinguishing all life. The Final Solution, as the Germans called it.

When Indian strategists advised Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the Israeli destruction of the Palestinians is an operational necessity for the Indian ambition to trade north and westwards  through the India Middle East Europe Corridor (IMEC), they have been trapping themselves. They are mistaking the operational necessity for economic growth with a strategy of destroying all their enemies, so that no hope of resistance can survive.

But empires don’t destroy hope of resistance. Imperialists who believe so have always been  defeated. The Athenian genocide on Melos was reversed within eleven years. The German genocide of the Jews was reversed within four, at the establishment of the Israeli state. In another 75 years the Jews were inflicting genocide on the Palestinians. The Indians, who have survived to reverse several British genocides, are now being persuaded by their prime minister, his advisers and financiers to believe that genocide can be worked to their advantage, big and small – that Gautam Adani’s investment in the port of Haifa, for example, will be more profitable if Gaza is forever Jewish; also, Anil Ambani’s investment in Rafael Advanced Defence Systems.

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 24th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Swedish Government has admitted it has no direct evidence of the cause of Alexei  Navalny’s death – only British Government hearsay.

In a series of email exchanges last week, the Swedish Foreign Ministry has revealed that its military laboratories and scientific establishments have not received post-mortem samples of Navalny’s tissues. There has been no Swedish analysis of the toxicology of those samples. There is no Swedish documentation proving  in the toxicology of the Navalny samples epibatidine poisoning as the cause of Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024.

Forensically speaking, the Swedish Government does not know — cannot know — if Navalny died of natural causes or was poisoned to death. Ten days ago, however, on February 14, the Swedish Government signed with four other states – UK, Germany, France and The Netherlands – an announcement of fact and allegation of murder it had no intention to verify.   

“The UK, Sweden, France, Germany and The Netherlands are confident [sic] that Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a lethal toxin,” the statement declared.   “This is the conclusion [sic] of our Governments based on analyses [sic] of samples from Alexei Navalny. These analyses have conclusively [sic] confirmed the presence of epibatidine. Epibatidine is a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America. It is not found naturally in Russia. Russia claimed that Navalny died of natural causes. But given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms [sic], poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him.”

Sic is the old Latin adverb manuscript which editors traditionally used to mark an original word or term that applied to a surprising claim, faulty reasoning, fabrication,  or falsehood which the reader might otherwise interpret as a mistake of transcription. No mistake here by the Swedes – this wording is their cover for not being caught at a provable lie.

An investigation in Stockholm by lawyer Mats Nilsson, based on Swedish freedom of information law, has produced the record to show that the only conclusion the Swedish Government has reached is to accept that Porton Down, the British Government’s chemical warfare laboratory, which synthesized epibatidine at least a decade ago and has accumulated operational stocks since then, has reported the discovery of that poison in the Navalny samples.

However, the British Government has not transferred these samples to Sweden for investigation. The Swedish Government’s chemical warfare laboratory at Umeå  does not confirm it has either received the samples, or analysed them, or reported any findings.

Instead, a series of emailed answers from the Swedish Foreign Ministry’s Disarmament Non-proliferation and Export Control (NIS) Unit has repeated the February 14 joint statement allegations. When requested to substantiate them, the Ministry has added a series of disclaimers: “we will not comment on the details regarding how the samples were obtained. What we can say is that we have high confidence in the integrity of the process… We will not comment on the details of the entities involved in the forensic investigation… We will not comment on the exact details of the identification process.   We will not comment on the details regarding how the samples from Navalny were obtained. What we can say is that we have high confidence in the integrity of the chain of custody.”

Pressed to clarify how, with these disclaimers, the Swedish  Government had drawn its conclusion that Navalny had been poisoned by epibatidine, the Foreign Ministry acknowledged there have been no Swedish laboratory analyses or reports. “Such documents are not kept by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”, an anonymous official speaking for the Ministry said.

The Foreign Ministry has also attempted to conceal that Porton Down synthesized and stocked epibatidine long before the Russians. “Synthetic routes to epibatidine can be found in open sources and several methods have been published. Open source information has also showed that at least two entities connected to the Russian chemical weapons programme have studied epibatidine since 2013.” The Swedish Foreign Ministry has intentionally omitted that the first British synthetic production of the poison was reported twenty years before, in 1993.  American synthesis had occurred at least a decade earlier.  

The only explicit admission is that the Swedish Government has “high confidence in the integrity” of the British Government’s chemical warfare laboratory at Porton Down but wants to conceal the role which that laboratory has played in manufacturing a new Russian poison to fool the world — exactly as the Novichok story was fabricated seven years ago.

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by Editor - Monday, February 23rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin will not run the gauntlet President Donald Trump has established around Cuba with the Russian Navy to escort Russian-flagged tankers delivering crude oil and petroleum products to Havana.

When Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla sat down in the Kremlin on Thursday to ask for more “solidarity, firmly demonstrated by you, the Government of Russia, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in the face of the tightening blockade of Cuba and the recent energy siege,” Putin responded enough is enough.

He meant that solidarity with Cuba is one thing, but not at the risk of military conflict with the Trump Administration and its naval forces in the Caribbean.

This is Mikhail Gorbachev talking, responded the Kremlin security analysis medium, Vzglyad, not Nikita Khrushchev.  

“Please convey my best wishes to the President of Cuba and Army General [Raul] Castro,” Putin told the foreign minister. “This year we will mark the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth, and we will do so together.”

It is not the first time Putin has said there is nothing but historical memory to share between Russia and Cuba; and that he would trade Russia’s military positions in Cuba for its interest in business with the US. In a meeting with President George W. Bush on October 21, 2001, Putin had said he would remove the Russian military intelligence base in Cuba. “I don’t want to horsetrade or nickel and dime this thing or argue about who gets what,”  Putin said to Bush in a recently declassified record.  In the outcome that is exactly what Putin did – and the trade failed because Bush did not reciprocate.

Read more.  

In his meeting with Rodriguez, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was clearer in public what the Russian line means.  “We call on the United States to show common sense and take a responsible attitude,” he said – “refraining from implementing its plans for a naval blockade of the Island of Freedom. We categorically reject the far-fetched allegations regarding Russia and Cuba, and cooperation between them, which is presumably threatening the interests of the United States or any other countries.  All disputes should be settled exclusively through dialogue based on mutual respect and a balance of interests. We know that our Cuban friends are always ready for honest negotiations… All issues should be resolved solely through a mutually respectful dialogue aimed at finding a balance of interests. We know that Cuban friends are always ready for such honest negotiations. In turn, we will consistently continue to support Cuba, the Cuban people in protecting the sovereignty and security of the country.”

“I would like to reiterate our complete solidarity with our Cuban friends. I fully share the views on our relations and strategic partnership, which you [Rodriguez] have stated.  I would also like to reaffirm the complete unacceptability of actions by the United States, which, as you have reminded just now, has adopted an executive order designating Cuba as a threat to US national interests. At the same time, the document says that this alleged threat is exacerbated by Cuba’s cooperation with Russia, which has been described in the document as a ‘hostile’ and ‘malign’ actor. We are confident that all states should define their national interests in a way that will include recognition of and respect for the national interests of all other countries.”  

Between the lines of what Lavrov and Rodriguez know to be ironical and untrue, the intended Russian message is for the Castro family to negotiate the best terms it can from the Trump Administration; and for the Trump family, and also Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s family, to be confident that they can continue their blockade of the island without Russian military challenge until the Cubans agree to the US terms.

In Putin’s references to Fidel and Raul Castro, he was hinting at the Russian endorsement of grandson Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, Raulito’s semi-secret negotiations with Rubio. Details of these talks “for the next Delcy in Cuba” were reported by Axios at the same time as the Foreign Minister’s meetings in Moscow. The Miami Herald has confirmed the details according to “a source with knowledge of the matter who asked for anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.”  

Repeating these details to confirm that Russian intelligence believes the Axios report to be accurate, Vzglyad has editorialized that so long as there is no US invasion of Cuba, Russia is telling the Cuban government to accept the “Delcy” solution.  “The possible support that friendly countries, primarily Russia and China, can provide to Cuba is extremely important,” reported Yevgeny Krutikov. “Even if we assume that the transformation of the regime is inevitable, then in any case it is vital to ensure its painlessness and safety.”  

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by Editor - Friday, February 20th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Ecuadorian Poison Dart frog, Epipedobates anthonyi,  doesn’t produce the deadly epibatidine poison out of personal spite. Indigestion, more like.

According to British toxicologists, epibatidine is refined by the frog’s innards from precursor chemicals, also toxins, which come from the flies, ants, beetles, and other bugs which live in the same environment and are within range of the frog’s tongue.  Captive frogs in a chemical warfare laboratory in the US, UK, Germany, France or Sweden would be unable to produce epibatidine unless the toxic insects the frogs eat are also captive. “Technically, a captive frog would need to be given the same variety of food that it eats in the wild,” a forensic toxicologist in England explains. “These ants, bugs, etc.  in the wild contain the toxins and chemicals which in turn the frog eats and then produces its own poison. So a lab would have a supply of these bugs that  are present in the frog’s natural environment in order for the captive frog to produce the poison. You would need to airmail live ants from Brazil to the lab. Not impossible, but if a toxicologist is going to detect the poison post-mortem anyway, why bother with such an effort.”

The British discoverers of the frog in the 1970s reported the great difficulty they had in isolating the toxicated from the untoxicated frogs in the Ecuadorian jungles. By the 1990s, however, this problem had been solved by scientists all over the civilized chemical warfare world. On payment from the military research budgets of their governments, they then synthesized epibatidine, so that the supply could be assured without the bugs and frogs on hand. In the Wikipedia summary of the science, “more than fifty ways to synthesize it in the laboratory have been devised.”  

The Americans came first in synthesizing and stocking epibatidine,  then the British.  More Americans followed in 1993.  The Chinese succeeded in their synthesis methodology at a university in Virginia, also in 1993.  The Russians were twenty years late. The first openly reported synthesis of the poison by Russian researchers was announced in 2013.  

In a British government press release, issued last week on February 14, it was claimed that “based on analyses of samples from Alexei Navalny. These analyses have conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine…Epibatidine is a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America. It is not found naturally in Russia.”  

The allegation by five governments – the UK, Sweden, France, Germany and The Netherlands – is that “given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him.” Referring to the Novichok allegations in Germany when Navalny was in hospital in Berlin and in the UK following the Skripal and Sturgess cases, the press release adds: “only the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law to carry out the attacks.”

This is false.

The state chemical warfare establishments of the US and UK had not only synthesized epibatidine more than a decade before the Russians, but they had accumulated substantial stocks for battlefield antidote testing, as well as for commercial production of painkillers.

Like the role of Porton Down (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, DSTL, see lead image) in producing and stocking Novichok in the UK before the alleged Russian attacks of 2018, and the German, French and Swedish laboratory roles in analyzing the Navalny samples in 2020, the means, motive and opportunity for falsifying the Russian poison story have been  openly documented for years.

Yulia Navalnaya’s presentations of the poisoning allegation confirm that she and the government agencies behind her have been preparing it for more than six months at laboratories they refuse to identify, and with evidence of tissue samples which, after two years, are forensically worthless. That means there is no proof that Navalny’s samples are genuine – that they have not been tampered with.

“Conclusive” may well be the evidence of epibatadine in the Navalny tissue samples, but it is “highly likely” —  the evidence standard identified in the press release —  that the poison evidence has been added after Navalny’s death. Speaking scientifically, tracing epibatadine from the Ecuadorian frog is herpetology; the same process in the current information war and in vulpine zoology has been recognized by forensic scientists as “the fox smells his own hole first.”

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 18th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Constipation causes desperation in middle age; incontinence causes desperation in old age. The Peskovite faction in Moscow is showing political desperation, and also the symptoms of its age.

The public attacks by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the points of the plan for US-Russia economic concessions endorsed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov after their negotiation in Miami last month by Kirill Dmitriev, have exposed a loss of confidence in President Vladimir Putin which has not been acknowledged by Moscow sources since the two-day revolt of Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023.

Details of the Dmitriev plan, and the counterattack from Lavrov and other sources, have been reported here.  

A Moscow source in a position to know comments:  “I see this betrayal all round. The only certain thing is that the military and GRU have drawn their lines on the [Ukraine] map – I don’t  see any compromise on territory and military terms.  But the de-dollarization issue has been  thirty years in the making. It has been rebuffed by the Chinese. There could not have been another outcome. The Dmitriev plan is a stab in the back because Putin lost this before he started it.  All that the [Russian] business wants is to be trading with the Americans. The interesting thing is everyone is silent.”

In reaction, Peskov has announced that the plan for the Geneva talks “is to discuss a wide range of issues.” These issues, he said, “include[e] the key ones, which concern territories and all other things, and are related to the demands that we have put forth. This is why the presence of the chief negotiator – that is, Medinsky – is necessary,”    This explanation for Vladimir Medinsky, a junior ranking assistant in the Kremlin, is not believed by the Moscow sources.   For one thing, the sources say, he is outranked in Geneva on both the Ukrainian side and the US side. He is there because neither the Foreign Ministry, to be represented in Geneva by Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, nor the General Staff represented by Admiral Igor Kostyukov,  the GRU chief, is trusted by Putin to make the concessions to the US side which he and Dmitriev have agreed.   

Altogether, the Russian delegation in Geneva is reported to number “more than twenty”.   This is intended to display the consensus which Dmitriev has upset and Lavrov has exposed.

Peskov told Tass: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is in constant contact with the negotiators; he gave them detailed instructions before their departure for Geneva.”  The problem of what concessions meet Putin’s instructions – and what concessions to the Americans the Russian officials are reluctant to make — has been acknowledged by Peskov:  “Dmitriev is on a separate track as a member of a working group on Russia-US economic cooperation.”

The implication – corroborated by Moscow sources – is that Putin’s instructions to Dmitriev are different (“separate track”) from the instructions to Kostyukov. The military will stand fast on the positions they presented in the Abu Dhabi round of talks; Dmitriev will give the Americans what was agreed in their Miami talks on January 31. Medinsky has been appointed as Putin’s stand-in – the sources believe – because the Foreign Ministry and General Staff are refusing to make the concessions on the end-of-war settlement which Dmitriev has told Witkoff he accepts while Putin is attempting to resolve the contradictions between them.

The role of the Peskovites is to hope he can do this and pretend if he cannot.   

Internal resistance to Dmitriev’s presence at the negotiating table in Geneva initially led the state media platform RIA Novosti to report on February 13 that Dmitriev would not be part of the official delegation in the trilateral talks with the US and Ukraine in Geneva. Instead, he would go to Geneva and separately “hold a meeting with members of the US delegation. It will also be held in Geneva.”  The Dmitriev talks were reported again by RIA Novosti on Tuesday afternoon: “Meetings of the working group on economic issues will also be held in Geneva, which includes the head of RDIF [Russian Direct Investment Fund] Kirill Dmitriev.”  

Before Galuzin took his seat in Geneva, the Foreign Ministry announced its version of Putin’s instructions. Sergei Ryabkov, a deputy foreign minister like Galuzin, has told Tass:   “The Russian delegation is heading to Geneva with the clearest possible instructions to act within the framework agreed upon by the presidents [of Russia and the US] during their meeting in Anchorage. Without this, success cannot be achieved.”  By the Anchorage framework – aka the Anchorage formula – Ryabkov means the undertakings Trump exchanged with Putin not to escalate the sanctions war against Russia.  

Ryabkov then used Soviet terminology to attack Trump’s escalation in the war at sea against tanker deliveries of Russian oil. “Moscow proceeds from the understanding that agreements on Ukraine must be durable in nature and eliminate the root causes of the conflict: We must ensure that any potential agreement is sustainable in nature. This means that, among other things, it must cover the settlement of issues that fall into the category of root causes of this conflict… Cuba is definitely in focus as yet another object of US imperialist actions, which completely disregard the norms of international law and the international law of the sea: We are unwaveringly engaged with this [the issue of Cuba]. Russia boasts sound experience of protecting the freedom of navigation and experiments of ill-wishers on ‘locking up’ the Russian fleet may end sadly for them: considerable experience is already in place here on implementing, including by our Navy, activities for protection of freedom of navigation. If somebody assumes ‘experiments’ may be continued, it may have a sad end directly for those experimenting.”   

Indirectly referring to Dmitriev, Ryabkov said: “Russia will continue working toward normalizing relations with the United States: This work will continue.”

Ryabkov was hinting that Dmitriev should continue negotiating for several months more — there should be no hurry now in Geneva to accept his plan under pressure from the US side. “Russia needs to see how the outcomes of the midterm elections in the United States in this November will impact the Trump administration’s foreign policy activity and how the agenda on which the Trump administration operates may evolve.”  

Trump himself has hinted that Dmitriev has convinced him that the economic terms have already been accepted by Putin, and that Ukrainian resistance to the Russian military terms is all that remains for his chief negotiators, Steven Witkoff and General Alexus Grynkewich, to  finalize in Geneva. “What are you expecting there?” a reporter asked Trump. “Well, we’re big talks. It’s gonna be, uh, very easy. I mean, it’s, look so far, Ukraine better come to the table fast, it’s all I’m telling you.”      

“Uh, we are in a position, we want them to come,” Trump trailed off. The position Trump thinks he is in at Geneva is the Dmitriev plan.

Peskov has responded with his agenda for the talks, omitting the Dmitriev plan: “They will discuss the key parameters of the settlement – military, political and humanitarian. The topic of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant may also be touched upon.”  

A Geneva banker with long experience in Russian business says:  “the Kremlin is at a crossroads, with Putin potentially choosing a high-risk, short-term economic fix over long-term strategic realignment and military certainty. Whether this is a brilliant gambit or a profound miscalculation will depend on whether Trump can (or will) deliver the sanctions relief [of the Dmitriev plan] and whether the Russian military and its allies will accept the outcome. I am pessimistic about Trump.”

“The war has created a firehose economy—massive state spending fuels growth in military industries but creates acute distortions: critical labor shortages (exacerbated by mobilization), high inflation, and a crash in civilian sectors. It’s unsustainable long-term, draining the National Wealth Fund and diverting resources from infrastructure, health care, and education. The naval blockade directly attacks Russia’s primary revenue source: energy exports. The current high bank interest] rates are designed to combat inflation fueled by massive state spending (primarily military). This policy suppresses civilian investment and consumption, slowing growth. It is a calculated risk to achieve a soft landing.”

View or listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid recorded on Tuesday afternoon as the Geneva talks began.   

(more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, February 17th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin has given instructions to accept the Trump Administration’s demand that in exchange for lifting sanctions against Russia, US capital must return to Russia on preferential terms as soon as possible.

For the new round of negotiations in Geneva later this week, Putin has replaced Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the military intelligence chief, as head of the Russian negotiating team with Vladimir Medinsky, a lower ranking Kremlin official.  Medinsky’s instructions are that the military terms of settlement on the Ukraine battlefield, insisted on by Kostyukov at the Abu Dhabi talks, be subordinated to the terms negotiated by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s principal negotiator with the White House.

The change in the Kremlin line is reported in the Russian media as the “Anchorage formula” and the “Dmitriev plan”.

This has been publicly criticized by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in  coded attacks in media interviews and a speech last week to the State Duma, declaring “the reality is quite the opposite.”   Lavrov – Moscow sources say – was reflecting the consensus of the General Staff, the Foreign and Defense Ministries.   

Putin reacted through spokesman Dmitry Peskov in defence of the Anchorage formula. “The spirit of Anchorage” – Peskov told Tass – “reflects a set of mutual understandings between Russia and the United States that are capable of bringing about a breakthrough, including in the settlement between Moscow and Kiev…[and] are fundamental.”  

Faction-fighting around the Kremlin over what this means has triggered dismay among those Russian businessmen who have acquired their new economic power with takeovers of foreign assets released by the exit of US and European corporations since 2022. These Russian sources report resentment at the backing which Putin has given to Russian Central Bank (CBR) Governor Elvira Nabiullina’s continuing high-interest rate policy for Russian borrowers in parallel with Dmitriev’s plan for low-interest rate US investors to re-enter Russia, recover their former market share, and generate the appearance of an investment stimulus in the run-up to the the State Duma elections on September 20.

Nabiullina and Dmitriev have combined to persuade Putin to allow them to make these Anchorage formula concessions to US negotiators Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Joshua Gruenbaum. Their last session in Miami on January 31 also included US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.   

What makes these concessions a “fundamental breakthrough”, as Peskov calls them, has been revealed in a memorandum of conversation published on February 12 by Bloomberg. This reports a “high-level memo which was drafted this year…which was circulated among senior Russian officials”. No author, date, subject line, distribution list, or any other detail of the document has been reported by Bloomberg to authenticate it, or to indicate whether it was leaked by the Witkoff side or the Dmitriev side after the Miami talks.   

The published summary has seven points, listed without quote marks. They indicate “US participation in Russian manufacturing” in the Russian aviation sector; “allow American firms to recover past losses” in the Russian oil and gas sector, “including offshore and hard-to-recover reserves”; “preferential conditions for US companies to return to the Russian consumer market”; “cooperation on nuclear energy, including for AI ventures”; “Russia’s return to the dollar settlement system, including possibly for Russian energy transactions”; “cooperation on raw materials such as lithium, copper, nickel and platinum”; and “working together to push fossil fuels as an alternative to climate-friendly ideology and low-emission solutions that favour China and Europe”.

There was no mention of Dmitriev in the Bloomberg report.

The next day Putin’s spokesman was asked to respond. He then identified Dmitriev by name. “A group on economic issues is working. On our side, it is headed by my colleague [Kirill] Dmitriev,” Peskov said. “Indeed, issues of trade and economic cooperation – both potential and proposed – are on the agenda, and they are being discussed. We hope these discussions will continue. At the moment, the de facto situation is such that, in practice, until, let’s say, a Ukrainian settlement is reached, it is hardly possible to talk about anything concrete, and for now this is limited to discussions.”  

Peskov acknowledged to Tass that he was “comment[ing] on a Bloomberg report about a ‘Kirill Dmitriev plan’ that envisions the possibility of establishing joint ventures with the US and settlements in dollars.”  

Peskov did not deny the plan’s points which had been reported. He also explicitly endorsed one of the points. “Russia has never abandoned the dollar; the US restricted its use for transactions, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing. ‘After all, no one abandoned the use of dollars. It was the issuing country, the United States, that restricted a number of countries’ right to use the dollar. And these countries, naturally, are using alternative payment methods, alternative forms. If the dollar is attractive, then, of course, everyone will return to using it, including alongside other currencies.’”  

Explaining Peskov’s endorsement of the Dmitriev plan, sources in Moscow believe Putin has been persuaded by Nabiullina of the CBR and other economic advisors that unless he agrees to the Dmitriev plan very soon, the Russian economy faces recession conditions before the September 20 national parliamentary elections.  Nabiullina’s refusal to lower the CBR’s key rate more than 50 basis points to 15.5%, announced on February 13, came with several warnings that Russia’s GDP is slipping below the 1% growth rate officially reported, and thus into recession. “We have revised our 2026 investment forecast slightly downwards,” Nabiullina said, “the gradual slowdown in economic activity is accompanied by labour market easing…The situation for Russian exporters is complicated by sanctions. In view of the global market trends, we have reduced our forecast of oil prices for the next three years. Accordingly, we have also adjusted the forecast of the value of Russian exports.”  

The CBR’s “baseline scenario” forecast is for GDP growth this year of between plus 1% and plus 2%. The “risk scenario” forecast is for GDP decline of between minus 6% and minus 7%. The deciding factor between the two outcomes in Nabiullina’s calculation is Trump strategy: “The risk scenario assumes escalation of international trade tensions, intensification of deglobalisation processes, import tariff increases worldwide above the levels predicted in the baseline scenario, and a sharp decline in the growth rates of the largest economies.”  

In advance of the Bloomberg disclosure of the Dmitriev plan, there has been sharp reaction to Putin’s concessions to the US from Russia’s strategic allies – China, India, and Iran.  The first signal of disagreement with Putin came from President Xi Jinping following their video conference on February 4. According to the readout from Putin’s national security adviser Yury Ushakov, “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping also exchanged views on their countries’ relations with the United States. Their approaches almost fully coincide.”   This is diplo-speak for its opposite: it means Xi and Putin are unhappy with each other’s separate  deal with Trump.

A well-informed source in Delhi said in anonymity: “So while [Indian] nationalists are calling out the Modi government out for betrayal of multipolarity by agreeing to Trump’s demand not to buy oil from Russia or from the pirate fleet,  Putin has quietly surrendered to the Americans himself.”

A Dubai source engaged in trade payment arbitrage adds: “Even after the [Russian] Central Bank made the renminbi a reserve currency, the trade in renminbi has carried heavy costs for Russians, and many Chinese exporters simply refuse to do settlements in RMB.  With India, the Central Bank never looked at Indian rupees as a reserve currency and has been very lukewarm. Russian Big Business more so. Their only interest with India has been in making large profits in trade and nothing else. No investment, no joint production. So Putin’s backing for Nabiullina and Dmitriev means fixation on the US dollar and submission to US hegemony. By the way, this is egg on the face of every podcaster talking of BRICS currency and Russia’s Eastern Pivot as gamechangers in multipolarity.”

A Moscow source adds that the Dmitriev plan reported by Bloomberg leaves out a major Putin concession allowing the privatization of the $300 billion in CBR reserves in a US-Russian “development fund” to be directed by family members of Trump and Witkoff, alongside Dmitriev. For more details, click to read.  

“There is a crisis of decision-making around Putin now,” claims a Moscow source in a position to know. “If Putin breaks all his undertakings with the BRICS allies, especially China and India, and subordinates the military conditions for the Ukraine battlefield to ingratiating with Trump’s capital, then what is silent now will grow very loud and very soon.”

(more…)

by Editor - Sunday, February 15th, 2026
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