By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the absence of a mass anti-war, anti-Empire political movement in the US – in the world, in fact  –  journalism is the next best thing. In the journalism which resists imperialism podcasting is the next best thing;  it’s as new to resistance mobilization as drones are to military campaigns. Think of podcasts as remote-guided, multiple sensor, long-range loitering munitions of the information war.

How can it be otherwise when President Vladimir Putin asked President Donald Trump to receive his telephone call on April 29,  to “express[…] his sympathy and support… in connection with the assassination attempt against him on April 25 to add for Trump’s wife “his best wishes and noted her contribution to efforts aimed at facilitating the reunification of Russian and Ukrainian children with their families”; to congratulate Trump for being “right to extend the ceasefire for Iran [to give] negotiations a further chance and help stabilise the overall situation”; and to warn “that if the United States and Israel resume military action, this would inevitably lead to extremely adverse consequences not only for Iran and its neighbours, but for the entire international community. He stressed that a ground operation on Iranian territory would be particularly unacceptable and dangerous.”  

Over the week that has followed, Trump has dismissed negotiations with Iran; used US naval and air forces against Iran forces and territory in the Strait of Hormuz,  breaking the ceasefire; initiated new sanctions against China, Belarus, and Russia “to disrupt procurement networks supporting Iran’s military programs”;  ordered escalation of long-range Ukrainian drone strikes against Russian energy infrastructure, and authorized the Pentagon signing of a billion-dollar investment and reward scheme for US companies and Ukrainian drone designers to capitalise on their Russian strikes.  This last move, by the way,  is a moneymaker devised by Elbridge Colby  at the Pentagon  and his deputy, Daniel Zimmerman, a CIA veteran close to Israel and a protégé of Jared Kushner.  

When the evidence of these Trump violations had become clear to Putin by May 9, as he celebrated Victory Day, he publicly thanked Trump for the two-day ceasefire on the Ukraine battlefield in demonstrating “respect for our shared victory over Nazism, and clearly humanitarian in nature.”  By indirection, Putin also excused Trump’s role in the US and Israeli Air Force bombing and missile attacks to decapitate Iran’s leadership by referring to the assassination of Ali Larijani as his “passing from life” (ушёл из жизни).     

Two days later, Putin organised a Kremlin media ceremony to report a successful test launch of the newest of Russia’s nuclear-capable missiles, the 35,000-km range Sarmat. In the Kremlin communiqué, the Russian text reveals Putin declined to address Sergei Victorovich Karakayev, commander of the Strategic Rocket Forces by his rank of colonel general.  In the official English translation, the Kremlin reports Putin as calling him “Mr Karakayev”.  As Karakayev did, General Staff officers regularly address Putin as Comrade Commander in Chief; Putin does not reciprocate.

Announcing the deterrence capability of the Sarmat, Oreshnik, Poseidon, and Burevestnik,  is Putin’s advertisement, a substitute for operation – in short, a podcast weapon.

In Bejing, is it otherwise when President Xi Jinping has proclaimed his “Four Propositions”, the first of which is not resisting, not deterring, not  combating the Trump empire but co-existing and cooperating with it instead.   

“First,”, Xi announced in April,”stay committed to the principle of peaceful co-existence…in the face of a complex and turbulent international landscape, solidarity and cooperation are the only right option. Five years ago, President Xi Jinping put forward the Global Development Initiative. In the years since then, he has successively proposed the Global Security Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, and the Global Governance Initiative. As a force for peace, stability and progress in the world, China will continue to work with all countries, including Canada, guided by the four global initiatives, to uphold dialogue and consultation, pursue win-win cooperation, advance the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.”

If ever there were a clearer repudiation of Marxist method, Leninist analysis, and Communist Party mobilization, this from the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party either means everything or it means nothing at all. The same can be interpreted of Xi’s three other “propositions” – the principles of national sovereignty, the principle of rule of international rule of law; and the principle of the “balanced approach to development and security”.  

Very clearly now, power, as Mao Zedong explained it, does not come out of the barrel of a gun  (枪杆子里面出政权 ) As chairman of the China’s Central Military Commission and commander-in-chief of the People’s Liberation Army,  Xi says he is for not losing power by not fighting foreign adversaries, not losing wars against them. However, Xi is for deterring those of his military subordinates who disagree with him. Xi’s gun has several barrels for domestic use only; only one of them is a pistol shot from the back of the head.

In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid aired on Tuesday afternoon Moscow time, morning New York time, the policy of the Five Noes, Putin’s and Xi’s, are discussed to show what will happen as Trump arrives to meet Xi in Beijing, and Putin plans his visit to Xi to follow. Trump’s visit of May 13-15 has forced Putin’s planned arrival on May 18 to be postponed.  

Click to listen or view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTmm2b60yNM

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 13th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

At President Vladimir Putin’s Victory Day press conference with Russian reporters he was misheard to say that the Ukraine war is coming soon to an end.

Pavel Zarubin, a reporter with  state television with whom Putin often plants question and answer combinations, asked: “You have recently said that the terrorist threat is growing, meaning the Kiev regime. We can see that such strikes are targeting cities located far away from the border, such as Yekaterinburg, Perm, and recently, Cheboksary. Is the West going too far?”  

Putin started by saying: “What exactly is the West? I believe that it is the so-called globalist part of the Western elites. It is them who are fighting against us by proxy of Ukraine. They have it pretty good in this respect, of course, having provoked this conflict.” He then recited a partial history of the collapse of the Istanbul-I framework of agreement, blaming French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson for retracting the terms which had already been initialled.  

Putin has also left out of his history the powerful opposition from the General Staff and Foreign Ministry which prevailed in the Security Council debate over whether the terms Putin wanted for his quick exit from the Ukraine battlefield would be enforceable; read more here.  

“Next,” Putin went on with his answer to Zarubin’s question, “ they promised assistance [to Ukraine] and started fostering confrontation with Russia, which is continuing to this day.” Putin’s reference to “they” is to Macron and Johnson. “I believe that the matter is coming to an end, but this is really a serious matter.” Putin was talking about Macron’s end of term and his successor’s election by April 2027, and Johnson’s disappearance since July 2022.

Putin then expressed hopefulness of a change in European policy. “The question is why they are doing this. First, they expected a ‘crushing defeat’ of Russia, as we know, the collapse of Russian statehood within a matter of several months. It did not work out. And then they got stuck in that groove, and now they cannot get out of it. That’s the problem. There are certainly clever people over there, those who certainly understand the essence of the current events. I hope that these political forces will gradually return to power or will take power into their own hands with support from the overwhelming majority of European countries.”

This was no forecast for French, British or German politics. Putin ended his press conference on more wishfulness. “I hope the understanding that this approach was mistaken is already beginning to emerge and will continue to grow stronger. And I hope that relations will eventually be restored with many of the countries that are currently attempting to denounce us. The sooner that happens, the better it will be for us and, in this case, for the European countries.”

In the discussion on Monday with Pelle Neroth Taylor in Sweden and Martin Sieff in the US, we explain why Putin’s  sooner isn’t so soon at all. Click to view or listen.

by Editor - Monday, May 11th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In Russian, the verb ушёл is in the perfective past tense, masculine, of the infinitive уйти, meaning “to leave”. Its synonyms include depart, quit, walk away, retire, resign, withdraw.  

A train which is reported to have left the station continues on its journey. It has not crashed off the track.  

In the common figure of speech, the expression ушёл из жизни is used to mean, literally, “he departed from life”. It’s a euphemism for “he died”.  More than softening the fact of death, in Russian religious tradition it means that the death was not the end but the transition to the after-life.

What the phrase cannot mean in Russian is that the individual was ambushed, bombed,  murdered.  ушёл из жизни  can never describe an assassination – unless the phrase is intended by its user to cover up the circumstances of the killing and the identity of the killer.

So what was President Vladimir Putin meaning when he told Russian reporters at the Kremlin on Saturday evening that Ali Larijani, executive head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council,  had “passed away” (ушёл из жизни).    

Putin was replying to a reporter who asked him to comment on the options in negotiation with Iran at the moment over safeguards for its highly enriched uranium. “Russia once offered its own export platform, the United States of America refuses. The Iranians say they want to keep the [uranium] too. Do you see a way out of this situation?”

“Everyone agreed –” Putin replied, “the representatives of the United States agreed, Iran agreed, Israel agreed. But then the United States hardened its position and demanded export only to the United States. After that, Iran hardened its position, I was told, and then along came Mr. Larijani, who unfortunately has passed away. That’s a pity, he was a person with whom it was possible to conduct a constructive dialogue, he was able to listen, hear, respond to everything. But then he came and said, ‘No, you know, we’ve changed our position too. Now we are not ready to take out this enriched uranium anywhere. We offer Russia a new format of cooperation – to create a joint venture, but on the territory of Iran, and together there to dilute uranium.’ I said, ‘I don’t mind. The main thing is that this should defuse the situation. But it seems to me that no one will agree with this: neither the United States nor Israel. This has happened, and in this direction the situation has reached a standstill, frankly.’” http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/79718 

In the Kremlin record Putin has met Larijani four times  – November 11, 2006; October 22, 2015; July 20, 2025; and most recently on January 30, 2026.  The Kremlin communiqué for their meeting last July acknowledged the two men discussed “stabilising the situation in the region and resolving any issues pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programme via political means.”  The January 2026 communiqué said they had met but nothing more.  

Six weeks later, Larijani was targeted and killed in an air strike on Teheran on March 17. The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed credit for the assassination. “This morning, we eliminated Ali Larijani. Ali Larijani is the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, that group of gangsters that effectively runs Iran. Alongside him, we also eliminated the commander of the Basij [Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani] – they are the gangsters’ assistants who are terrorizing the population in the streets of Teheran and other Iranian cities. ” 

President Donald Trump followed the next day: “Their leaders are gone. I guess one of the — their top person [Larijani] was a — they say, a lot of people say their actual top was, uh, killed yesterday, along with somebody else [Soleimani], uh, that — who was responsible for the killing. The man that was responsible for the killing of 32,000 people over the last two weeks…Nobody wants to have — uh, nobody wants to have Iran or anybody, but nobody wants to have Iran with a nuclear — because these people are crazy. They’re absolutely crazy and they’re vicious, violent.”  

Netanyahu’s word was “eliminated”. Trump’s word was “killed”. But Putin’s word was “passed away”.

What has Putin calculated he gains from falsifying the meaning of the killing and the Israeli and US officials who ordered it?  The reporters meeting with Putin were unable to follow up.

by Editor - Sunday, May 10th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Once upon a time, in 2019, President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia and Israel make “a true common family; I can say this without exaggeration. Almost 2 million Russian speakers live in Israel. We consider Israel a Russian-speaking country…Without any exaggeration, I can say with pride that probably there has never been such a high level of relations between Russia and Israel, if, of course, we don’t go back to the very first months or maybe the first couple of years of the state of Israel. The positions of Russia and Israel, the peoples of our countries coincide….”  

Putin was exaggerating the number of Israelis of Russian origin. But even at his estimate they are dwarfed by the 3 million Americans of Russian origin or Russian language. In fact, the measured numbers of the Russian diaspora living outside Russia are greater, in order of magnitude,   in the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, the US, Brazil,  and Germany, all ahead of Israel.  Putin has never described the US, Germany,  or Brazil as “a Russian-speaking country, a true common family”.

Putin was also misrepresenting the national identification and loyalties of Israelis of Russian origin. At most, only one in four, about 400,000, has held a Russian passport and has claimed Russian citizenship. However, most of that  number have not renewed their passports as they expired in the past five years; these Israelis have abandoned Russian citizenship. In the Russian presidential election of 2018, only 120,000 Israeli Russians were eligible to vote. Of that number, only 12,000 actually cast votes.  

Putin won an estimated 8,640 of those Israeli votes. Putin’s share of the votes in Israel trailed several other diaspora states including Finland, Canada, Italy, Germany,  and Greece – all NATO adversaries.    

In the Israeli army genocide in Gaza, Lebanon,  and the West Bank of Palestine, 5,067 soldiers were holding Russian passports as dual nationals; more than double that number were US citizens; more than 6,000 were French.   Under current Russian law, this would be criminal — but only if the Israeli Russians volunteered or contracted to serve in the Israeli forces, not if they were conscripted under Israeli law. By contrast, Israeli Russians making their living in Israeli companies producing weapons supplied to the Ukraine for combat against Russia are not breaking Russian law.  

Russian Jews who are members of the Chabad organization which is supporting the war against Russia, the Gaza genocide, and the war against Iran are also not breaking Russian law by their Chabad links and loyalties. They include Berel Lazar (lead image, left, with picture of Chabad leader, Menachem Schneerson), officially Chief Rabbi of Russia whose election to that post against rival candidates has been credited to Russian oligarch money and Putin’s political backing.  

In short, Putin’s publicly expressed rationale for supporting the Russian “common family” in Israel is a fabrication – statistically, politically, ideologically. Putin’s support is personal.

During the Gaza genocide, reports from the Russian Emergencies Ministry have claimed to have delivered 827 tonnes of food aid to the Palestinians through Egypt.  In the same period, Russia delivered on commercial terms about 1.6 million tonnes of food and fodder grain to Israel, making Russia the leading source of Israeli grain imports;    90% of Israel’s wheat imports.   

Last month, the Kiev regime announced that it would begin sanctions against Israel, cutting off the military trade, unless the Israeli government stopped imports of Russian grain.  The Netanyahu government responded on April 30 by barring the Russian bulker, Panormitis, from unloading its 28,000-tonne grain cargo at Haifa.  

The Russian Foreign Ministry has made a public protest in Moscow. “Barring absurd and baseless claims of the Ukrainian side,” spokesman Maria Zakharova said, “we would like to note that Moscow regretted this step that was obviously taken under pressure from Kiev. This runs counter to Israeli authorities’ official statements about their commitment to maintain Russian-Israeli economic cooperation and jeopardises the food security of Israel itself.”  

Neither the President nor the Foreign Ministry has publicly said that Israel’s wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran jeopardize the food security of the populations under attack.

Instead, Putin has publicly supported President Donald Trump’s Gaza redevelopment scheme under the “Board of Peace”. Last October, responding to an Iranian question about what Russia “can do to bring an end to the [genocide]”, Putin replied: “regarding President Trump’s proposal on Gaza – you may find this surprising, but Russia is overall ready to support it. Provided, of course, that it truly leads to the ultimate goal we have always spoken about. We must thoroughly examine the proposals made. Since 1948 – and later in 1974, when the relevant UN Security Council resolution was adopted – Russia has consistently supported the creation of two states: Israel and a Palestinian state. I believe this is the only key to a final, lasting solution to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. As far as I understand – I have not looked through the proposal carefully yet – it suggests creating an international administration to govern Palestine for some time, or more precisely, the Gaza Strip. It is proposed that Mr Blair would head it. Now, he is not known as a great peacemaker. But I know him personally. I have even visited him at his home, spent the night there, and in the morning, over coffee in our pyjamas, we spoke at length. Yes, this is true.”

In a new Red Pill Diaries podcast with Rasheed Muhammad, the discussion focuses on Russia, Iran and China in resisting Trump empire-fighting strategy with Israel. Click to listen or view.

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by Editor - Friday, May 8th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There always comes a tide in the affairs of Russian businessmen when they think are on to a fortune.

“We must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures,” Brutus famously told Cassius as they sought to capitalize on their assassination of Julius Caesar in Shakespeare’s play of that name. The outcome of their plot and of the play, however, was defeat in successive battles —  Cassius first, followed by Brutus, and then their suicides to avoid the humiliation of arrest, trial for treason, and public execution.

The memorable quote to encourage farsightedness, audacity,  and fortitude ought to come with a lethality warning, and in the small print the tested probability of failure, ruin, death. Russian businessmen, however, believe they can beat those odds by what they call “administrative measures”. These amount to lobbying of the presidential administration and government to secure their money at risk with state cash and rig the outcome of their ventures by agreement in advance to share the proceeds. This is known as racketeering in US law.  

It has been the strategy of President Vladimir Putin and his special negotiator with the Trump Administration to rig the outcome of the war in the Ukraine and cancellation of US economic sanctions against Russia by billion-dollar dealmaking with Trump, his family, advisors, and friends. The negotiator’s name is Kirill Dmitriev.  He has been Putin’s  appointee since February 23, 2025.   Almost fifteen months later, after monthly face-to-face meetings, weekly telecommunications, and dozens of MoUs and term sheets, Dmitriev’s record is what in Brutus’s warning to Cassius was called “shallows and miseries”. Bottom line net loss is the auditor’s term for it.

Dmitriev’s justification is to publish every day a stream of tweets in which he blames the British and European governments for their sabotage operations and his continuing confidence in Trump. In Dmitriev’s latest tweet (lead image, left) he has repainted the European Union flag in the red of the Soviet Union, Chinese and Vietnamese flags, declaring that “with woke, socialist, immigration-friendly policies and narrative control, the leftist EU bureaucrats have created a dysfunctional version of the USSR.” Ukrainian born, American educated and employed, Dmitriev is blaming the war against Russia on the Reds – the Bolsheviks of Brussels.  

He is announcing himself as a White officer serving the Tsar although that’s not Putin, it’s Donald Trump. He announced himself king in February 2025,   just before Dmitriev’s official appointment; as the Pope on May 5, 2025,   a month after Dmitriev held talks at the White House;  and then as the Son of God on April 13, 2026,  four days after Dmitriev met with Trump’s representatives for talks “on economic issues”.  The purpose of those talks was to negotiate an extension of the US Treasury’s waiver on the trade in Russian oil; Dmitriev failed, again.  

This record is so plainly White, and so clearly a failure, it was surprising that the influential Wang Yi, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China,   and also Foreign Minister, announced on April 30, that  Xi and Trump are the “stabilizing anchor for China-U.S. relations”;  and that those relations —  he agreed on the telephone with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio — make “the most important bilateral relationship in the world, and that head-of-state diplomacy lies at the core of this relationship.”  

The priority of this relationship, Wang told Rubio, is “the Taiwan question [which] bears on China’s core interests and is the biggest risk in China-U.S. relations.” Compared to that, Wang implied in the public summary of what he said, the US war against Iran and the “Hormuz question” are of secondary importance. He and Rubio “also exchanged views on the situation in the Middle East and other issues”, Wang said dismissively in the last line of his read-out.

Trust in Trump to act as the “stabilizing anchor” – that was the Chinese Politburo’s variant of  Dmitriev’s White line for Putin.

One week later, following Wang’s meeting in Beijing with Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on May 6, China’s public priority appears to have shifted. Regarding the “illegitimate” war the US and Israel had launched against Iran, Wang said, “China deeply regrets this. A full end to the fighting cannot wait, any resumption of hostilities would be even more inadvisable, and staying committed to negotiations is particularly important.”  

This was also a warning to Trump, as Wang’s spokesman then announced to the press.

“China believes that bringing about a full stop of hostilities is of utmost urgency, a relapse in fighting must be avoided and sticking to negotiations is highly important. China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security and commends Iran’s willingness of seeking political settlement through diplomatic means. On issues regarding the Strait, resuming normal and safe passage at the Strait is a shared concern of the international community. China hopes that parties concerned will respond to the strong call of the international community as soon as possible.”  

Asked by a reporter for the US propaganda agency Bloomberg if this was being communicated to Washington — “do you have any details” on the arrival of Trump in Beijing scheduled for May 14, and “when it might happen?” — Wang’s spokesman refused to say. “Please stay tuned,” he said instead.  China is not confirming the Trump summit; it is reserving its decision.

In the new podcast with Jamarl Thomas, broadcast on Thursday morning New York time, the discussion focuses on the flags, red and white, which are now flying. Click to view or listen.  

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by Editor - Friday, May 8th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It was a British prime minister, Harold Wilson, who once said that a week is a long time in politics. The Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who ranks higher than a minister as a Politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party, has just demonstrated that five hundred milliseconds is a long time in politics.

As the lead images show — recorded by the state China Central Television (CCTV) camera crew in Beijing on Wednesday —   that minuscule interval in time elapsed as Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was greeted by Wang before they sat down with their delegations to talk. The top row shows Araghchi approaching Wang, shaking his hand, then inclining his head forward. Wang, reciprocating, leans forward, and the two men embrace. They then draw apart, as each man smiles at the other.

The second row picture recapitulates the hug, a few milliseconds after it had begun. Araghchi had been planning the embrace in advance, signalling Wang with a smile. Wang did not reciprocate with his smile until the hug commenced. Wang’s thin smile was broadening as he drew back, continuing to hold on to Araghchi’s right arm and saying something in the language they shared, English.

The third row picture shows the two officials straightening, unsmiling, for a ceremonial handshake for the cameras. This is the picture which most international media have used to illustrate the meeting — the first at this high level since the US and Israel war began against Iran on February 28.

Take note, however — the photo sequence, captured by slowing down the speed and snipping the images frame by frame shortly after they were first released, has been edited, first by CCTV and then by most western media. Between the second and third second of the original film, Araghchi’s left arm and hand went up to Wang’s shoulder as they drew together in their embrace. However, CCTV has edited out the hug: in the footage broadcast subsequently by most international  media, the hug has disappeared altogether, to be replaced by the formal handshake.   The cut occurred at about the 500^th millisecond.

Not everyone erased the Araghchi-Wang hug. The Turkish state media agency Anadolu, for example, has continued to broadcast it.  

What has transpired took Wang, the Politburo, and President Xi Jinping a full seven days to decide.

That’s the interval since April 30, when Wang disclosed he had just spoken by telephone with US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.  To Rubio, Wang announced that the Taiwan Strait was a higher geopolitical priority for China than the Hormuz Strait, and that if President Donald Trump agreed, he and President Xi would enjoy their summit meeting on May 14 in a celebration of  the “U.S.-China relationship…the most important bilateral relationship in the world, and that head-of-state diplomacy lies at the core of this relationship. Both sides should maintain communication and coordination, respect each other, and properly manage differences to accumulate results for high-level interactions and seek strategic stability.”  

That there, declared Wang for Xi, was the precondition for Trump’s arrival in Beijing. “The Taiwan question bears on China’s core interests and is the biggest risk in China-U.S. relations,” Wang said. “The U.S. side should honour its commitments and make the right choice.” As for the Hormuz Strait and Trump’s war against Iran, Wang left that to his last line, an almost empty mention: “The two sides also exchanged views on the situation in the Middle East and other issues.”  

Wang’s declaration was published in the evening of April 30, local time. For more analysis, read this.  

Wang’s ministry then went silent. The last of the ministry’s daily briefings was held shortly before Wang’s conversation with Rubio last Thursday. There was no mention at the briefing of the Iran war or of the Trump summit meeting.  The ministry then closed officially to celebrate the nationwide May Day holiday from Friday, May 1, through Wednesday, May 5.

When the ministry returned to the daily briefing on Thursday, May 6, it was late in the day and the Wang-Araghchi meeting had already concluded.  Asked what had happened, the briefer replied: “They exchanged views on bilateral relations and international and regional issues of mutual interest. More information on this will be released soon. Please stay tuned.”   

State media reporters representing France, Russia, and the US propaganda agencies – Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, New York Times – asked for China’s response to threats by President Trump to escalate militarily at the Hormuz Strait and in sanctions against Chinese purchases and tanker shipments of Iranian oil.  

Asked to confirm Trump’s arrival for the meetings with Xi on May 14-15, the official answer appeared to be non-committal. “Do you have any details on that visit, such as when it might happen? Lin Jian: Please stay tuned.”  Bloomberg asked the question; it hasn’t reported the answer. Nor have AP, Reuters, or the New York Times who all heard it.

That answer isn’t non-committal. It is now Wang’s and Xi’s precondition for Trump – and this marks a change in China’s policy towards the Iran war.  “China believes,” Wang’s spokesman said, “that bringing about a full stop of hostilities is of utmost urgency, a relapse in fighting must be avoided and sticking to negotiations is highly important. China supports Iran in safeguarding its national sovereignty and security.”

If Trump “relapses into fighting” and does not “stick to negotiations”, Xi is communicating that Trump will not be allowed to land in Beijing next week.  China will not permit itself to be Trump’s cover for attacking Iran, as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi allowed himself to endorse the Israeli-American war against Iran in the Knesset on February 25, two days before the war began.  Wang is changing the meaning of what he told Rubio on April 30.

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 6th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Easter came early this year with good news.  

In the first three months to March 31,   exports of fresh Russian chicken eggs increased by 21% over the same period of 2025. Mongolia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were the leading importers. How exactly the UAE landed the eggs is unclear since air traffic was limited by the war against Iran and the Hormuz Strait closed to cargoes heading for UAE ports.

The politics of Russian eggs has been salutary for President Vladimir Putin.

In December 2023, in his annual question-and-answer review of the year, he apologized to two pensioners who complained at the sharply rising price of  eggs and chicken meat. “ ‘It is very sad to buy eggs in our country,’ grieves Andrei Samoilov from the Tomsk Region. Anastasia Plastinina from Ivanovo asks: ‘Are these eggs laid by golden hens or what?’ ”  

Putin replied: “I am sorry about this and want to apologise for this problem. This is a setback in the Government’s work. Although they say this is not the case, I still think it is – the problem is related to a failure to increase imports enough. Apparently, they hoped to make more money, but they promised to fix this soon.”

The president also had this explanation to demonstrate the grip he held on the laying hens of the country in wartime. “This is what happened. As I said, we had a slight increase, but still an increase in income, the level of salaries and so on. The demand went up. This is a relatively cheap source of protein; it is popular with people. I am happy to eat scrambled eggs myself, and at one time, I could easily gulp down ten at once in the morning. But what happened? Demand grew but production did not. This is the first point. The second point. Imports were not started soon enough or in the needed volumes. Incidentally, some Turkish companies are now offering us additional imports. We are developing our economic ties, including in agriculture, very well. Other countries, including Belarus, also have proposals. But we didn’t start our imports on time. We should have resolved these problems within the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union].  Decisions were made, I think the other day, but at any rate they must be made in December, so the situation is bound to improve – there is no doubt about this. I am hoping for this very much. Because these conversations with the Ministry of Agriculture took place at least two weeks ago.”  

Two years later, in the same annual December show, Putin patted himself and the pensioners on the back. “I would note that last year, or the year before, we were critically assessing the actions of our colleagues in the Government when the price of eggs suddenly spiked. Now, prices are not just falling – they have dropped by over ten percent, almost 16 percent. These are also important factors. Nevertheless, without any doubt, we must closely monitor the situation in every segment and across every demographic group.” 

For Putin, however, the polls are showing that voter approval of what he says and does is several percentage points lower today than it was last December, and much lower than it was in December 2023. It is just as clear in the Kremlin that one can’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. Scrambled eggs, too. Levada Centre polling shows that when the price of eggs goes up, voter approval of Putin goes down.   Never mind that Russian eggs are cheaper than any other European eggs (except Ukraine).  

For Putin there has been an egg-before-chicken problem. He was so successful in his promise of December 2023 and order to the Agriculture Ministry, a surge of egg output followed in 2024 and 2025. So many eggs in fact, that supply outstripped demand. When prices fell, as they usually do in such a situation, Russian egg producers started to export their surplus to keep the price stable and their profit margin up.   The first Russian eggs began to feed American buyers for the first time in over thirty years – despite the sanctions war.  

The pensioners are not complaining to Putin about egg prices now. The egg farmers are complaining instead, as rising costs, low-priced competition from Chinese egg dumping,  and low domestic egg prices have crushed the profitability of the farms.    

The egg farmers don’t have as many votes at election time as consumers. And in the latest poll of Russian voter intention if the presidential election were called next Sunday, Putin has dropped to 49%. This is far ahead of the current presidential rivals, but it is far below the 68% vote he received in 2024, just before the March election of that year.  

He’s been less popular in voter choice – 30% in 2005; 13% in 2008; 29% in 2014.   But this is a parliamentary election year; the next presidential election isn’t until 2030. But presidential succession politics are perennial, especially in wartime.

This is a scrambled way of introducing the new podcast discussion with Nima Alhkorshid in which we pick out the good news from the bad news on the several fronts of the war President Donald Trump and his allies are fighting against Iran, Russia, and China.

We start and end the hour-long podcast with a question about China’s intentions towards its allies, and this question about President Xi Jinping and Trump come May 14, when their Beijing summit is scheduled to begin.

Who will chicken first?

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 6th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On April 29 President Vladimir Trump telephoned President Donald Trump for a conversation lasting more than an hour and a half. The conversation was reported by Putin’s spokesman, Yury Ushakov,  as “in a friendly manner and was frank and businesslike.” It concluded, he said, “on a warm note, wishing each other all the best.”  

If Putin detected any sign of cognitive disconnection in Trump – trailing sentences, lost subjects, slurring of speech, word salad, short-term memory loss, frequent change of topic – he is keeping the evidence top secret.

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by Editor - Monday, May 4th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the beginning there was the Word.

The Greeks recited it homerically for those who couldn’t read or write but enjoyed a bloody war story in which their side killed their enemies with an assist from the gods on Mount Olympus.  

Later, the Jews wrote it down on stone tablets by dictation from their god on Mount Sinai; then downhill they elaborated on goat skins on what He and they agreed He had meant chabadistically.    

The Americans have been publishing their Word in print papers until they invented tweets for those with short attention spans, then podcasts for those who want to do something else (not read) at the same time.

In the Chinese versions of these new media, an antidote has been necessary for the problem which the Chinese leadership has.  The problem is that China state representatives haven’t the words to explain, persuade or convince either their own people, or their allies,  or their adversaries. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, for example employs a robot by the name of Guo Jiakun to do this job. He looks human, neurologically speaking; what he says is robotic, and slower in output than a common AI system.   

To camouflage this glaring difference which western audiences detect, and limit the consequential damage to the credibility of their officials, the Chinese have devised a novel propaganda system to explain their rationale. The reason the Chinese leadership has nothing clear to say in public, they say, is not that they don’t know what’s on their minds, but rather that they don’t care that others don’t understand.  

Don’t care – this is the new Chinese propaganda (Chiprop) system.

Chinese officials don’t care, as Chiprop explains the thinking in Forbidden City, because the Chinese are winning all the wars everybody else (US, Israel, Iran, Russia, Ukraine etc.) is fighting. They achieve this, Chiprop also claims, because they have already predicted correctly everything that has happened; and because in the future, even now, Chinese military systems have proved they are superior to anything anyone else is preparing to field on the battlefield or has already tested in action.

What the Chiproppers also mean is that in the Ukraine war and the Iran war, the lesson is that the victories of the Russians and Ukrainians over the Americans, NATO allies, and Israelis are temporary and illusory. They are no more than the illustration of the superiority of Chinese strategy, operations, tactics, and indeed the Chinese mind, for the future in which all of the current adversaries – Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz, Mojtaba Khamenei, Benjamin Netanyahu – will have been buried, superseded, forgotten.

“This is not the Iran War. It is WWIII”, declared a Chipropper who appeared freshly four months ago, anonymously named China Arbitrageur (“ChinArb”). “It is already over…WWIII is the war 21st-century globalized industrial civilization can fight. Its weapons are not tanks and carriers. They are supply-chain interdiction, chokepoint sovereignty, financial weaponization, and resource arbitrage. It does not need a declaration, because in a globalized economy you are already in a state of mobilization. It does not need a casus belli, because the existence of the dependency relationship itself is the casus belli. It does not need to end in a treaty, because what it transfers is not territory — it’s control over flows.”  

This is the World War which China has already won, according to ChinArb of Chiprop.

“System C won the entire war tactically. System A lost strategically. System B won strategically. These are three different subjects. This is the first time System C has let the world see itself. But please also remember — this is only the first time.”    

ChinArb explains that System A is the US, Israel, the NATO allies, Japan, South Korea – each and all of them defeated already. System B is China which has won. System C isn’t identified but appears to refer to Iran and behind Iran’s tactical victory, China,  because it “controls the flows”.

In this advance celebration of VOW day – Victory Over the World – the Chinese don’t care to address any of the issues the current war combatants claim to be their war aims, their war settlement terms. “Beijing cares about oil. Beijing doesn’t care whose oil… If China has no loyalty even to the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], then what is the actual relationship between Beijing and the IRGC? It is not a subordinate relationship. It is not a ‘constraint and constrained’ relationship…Beijing cares about oil. Beijing doesn’t care whose oil…The IRGC knows that China is not loyal to the IRGC. China is loyal to oil. The IRGC is just one of many sellers of oil on this planet — and because it can only sell to China (excluded by the global sanctions regime from all other buyers), China can buy from it at a deep discount.”  

“What China has built is System B — a global industrial network woven together from manufacturing capacity, resource flows, logistics, settlement channels, and infrastructure investment. And an industrial system does not need proxies, because the expansion mechanism of an industrial system does not depend on military victory at all. It expands by converting industrial output into the dependency relationships of the physical world itself. Its influence is not produced by action — it is produced by existence. The fact that 1.4 billion Chinese people’s industrial appetite exists on this planet is itself enough to change the calculus of every resource exporter, every port, every mine, every refinery, every shipping company. It does not need to send anyone anywhere to persuade anyone of anything — its industrial metabolism is doing this on its own, every day, twenty-four hours, without rest.”  

“This exchange of System A’s apparent victories for the kind of concession System B doesn’t care about — has a name. It is the actual operating mechanism of the Islamabad negotiation. But it is more than a mechanism. It is what you will see in every news headline over the next three to five years.”  

“The nuclear non-proliferation issue — something System A has treated as a global issue for fifty years — is quietly being downgraded from ‘global issue’ to ‘System A issue.’ System B doesn’t care. And issues that System B doesn’t care about will increasingly be marginalized — not opposed, but forgotten… The nuclear non-proliferation issue is a System A issue. It is a System A internal order established by the NPT regime in 1968 — preserving Western monopoly over nuclear technology. System B is not in this logic. Nuclear weapons make no contribution to System B’s expansion mechanism. They will not let China sell one more ton of steel. They are completely irrelevant to industrial metabolism. So China’s actual position on the nuclear issue is: whatever, as long as it doesn’t interfere with doing business.”  

This sounds like science – military, political, sociological, economic, logistics. In fact – that’s to say, in proof – it’s ideological. It’s as religious as the IRGC word is Islamic; the Jewish word is Chabad;  the American word is what President Trump tweets.

The Chiprop technologists who devised this new word and media “system” have studied American susceptibility to Christian and Jewish guile for half a century. Their study of the impact of Chinese guile on US audiences began with Kung Fu, the America television series of 1972 in which an actor of Christian evangelical descent and regular drug enhancement, played a half-American, half-Chinese monk who defeats adversaries with a combination of martial arts moves and his mind over their matter.

That was a popular fiction. So are ChinArb, Hua Bin, and Jiang Xueqin.

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by Editor - Sunday, May 3rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the early morning of March 4, Sri Lanka time, the Islamic Republic of Iran Ship (IRIS) Dena was attacked by the US submarine USS Charlotte with two torpedoes.

The first destroyed the Dena’s propeller shaft and stopped her dead in the water.  Her position was at coordinates 6.0073 degrees North, 79.8654 degrees East: that was nine nautical miles (nm) outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters;  19 nm (35 km) west of the harbour of Galle, a port on the southwestern coast of the island.

At the 30-knot speed the Dena had been moving, she was 18 minutes from the safety of Sri Lankan territory. Immobilized, however, the Dena captain, Abuzar Zarri, gave the crew the order to assemble on the aft deck in full visibility of the Charlotte, and prepare to abandon ship. As the crew mustered, a second torpedo was fired by the Charlotte to sink the Dena and kill the crew.

The torpedo warhead explosion broke the keel;  the Dena sank in less than five minutes.

Of the crew’s 180-man complement, 32 were rescued from the water by the Sri Lankan coast guard, including Zarri and the first officer; 87 bodies were recovered; 61 were lost. Altogether, 148 were killed.

On the Charlotte, submerged at a distance from the Dena of less than 10 nm (18 km), there was an interval of approximately ninety minutes between the first fire order and the second, the kill order. A close-range film of the second torpedo strike, recorded by the Charlotte, was released to the press by the Pentagon.  

Four men participated in the chain of command through which these two strike orders were requested; decided;  transmitted;  executed.  

They are Commander Thomas Futch (lead, left), commander of the USS Charlotte;  Captain Jeffrey Fassbinder (second left), chief of the Submarine Squadron 7 of the US Pacific Fleet;   Admiral Stephen Koehler (centre), Commander of the US Pacific Fleet;  and Peter Hegseth (right), the US Secretary of War (Defense).

Hegseth announced in a Pentagon briefing  on March 4 what he wanted the public to believe he had done.  “Yesterday in the Indian Ocean, and we’ll play it on the screen there, an American submarine sunk [sic] an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo, quiet death. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.”

Hegseth was deceiving. He knew two torpedoes had been fired; it was the second which sank the Dena. He knew the Dena did not “[think] it was safe in international waters”. This was because  US intelligence had been reporting to the Pentagon and the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet command that the Iranian Navy had been requesting safe haven for the Dena and its two escorts, IRIS Lavan and IRIS Bushehr, in Sri Lanka, then India, for more than seven days before the March 4 attack.

Admiral Koehler knew because he had met with Sri Lankan officials in Colombo between February 19 and 21 to deter them from taking Iran’s side.   “We stand with Sri Lanka in facing shared security challenges—from maritime domain awareness to countering transnational threats”, the US Embassy announced.  On March 4, the Sri Lankan newspaper Tamil Guardian editorialized: “Did Washington’s Sri Lanka visit precede a secret naval strike? Questions grow after Iranian frigate sunk.”

In the new article just published in the Tehran Times, the evidence of the Dena attack has been summarized and the political implications weighed – for the US and for the governments of Sri Lanka and India, which joined the US in the preliminaries, before the attack of March 4, and in the aftermath.

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by Editor - Saturday, May 2nd, 2026
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