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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Existentially speaking — which means whether to live and let live, to do or die — how far from a mortal enemy is far enough? In between the one and the other outcome, is there anything but a no man’s land?   Carthago delenda est – “Carthage must be destroyed” […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The man in the frame is General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There are no insignia on his jacket, zipped tight to his chin. His torso and legs are concealed beneath the desk which also accommodates a computer screen without keyboard or mouse; and a pen held […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with “He was not a nihilist for nothing!” This is one of the funniest, and at the same time one of the saddest lines written by Ivan Turgenev in Fathers and Sons, the novel of his which preserves its contemporaneity through the Russian revolutions better than any other classic of Russian […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This is a primer on the way the wind has been blowing since the Ukrainian ammunition  stockpile was blown up at Khmelnitsky in the early hours of May 13. Radiation measurements in the western Ukrainian city appear to have risen sharply on May 13 and 14, indicating that British-supplied depleted […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There is a grave risk that in three weeks’ time US and NATO forces will attempt direct combat against Russia. The operational plan is to strike from Romanian airspace in the south and the Baltic states in the north, in camouflage of the NATO exercise called “Air Defender 23”,  and […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Evidence from the US Air Force (USAF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released in federal court this week ahead of a bail hearing for Jack Teixeira, the junior airman accused of leaking top secret Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) briefing papers, reveals that Teixeira was under close surveillance […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This is a tale about whales and Russians. In the telling, it has surprised even its author. A university professor from Oregon, he belongs to that seagoing pod which, like the North Pacific right whales,    is a seriously endangered species right now — that’s the American exceptionalists. Ryan Tucker Jones’s book, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It’s  unlikely Vladimir Zelensky has read Oscar Wilde’s well-known maxim: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” But for the idea that Ukrainian officials can draw more profit, and lose fewer of their countrymen on the battlefield, by making a flurry of tactical manoeuvres […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the war against Russia, Penny Wong (lead image, left) , the Australian Foreign Minister, has done more fighting with her feet than with her mouth. Last August 5, at a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in Cambodia, Wong walked out during a speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The pro-war English writers supporting the arming of the Ukrainians with depleted uranium ammunition* have no brains. The anti-war English writers opposing depleted uranium ammunition have no spines. Has the kingdom of the English ever been so self-deluded on the page and so depleted on the battlefield?   Yes once, […]