By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Oreshnik Moment was first coined on June 1 here  and then discussed in the Reason2Resist podcast on June 3.  It’s a period of time – it’s not a prediction of the counter-attack which the Russian General Staff will launch against the June 1 drone attack on the bomber element of the […]

by Editor - Thursday, June 12th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Today is the Russian national holiday which President Boris Yeltsin first introduced to celebrate himself and whitewash the crimes he committed against the country. For reminder today, a kindly reader has found a series of interviews on Yeltsin and his crimes, which I first recorded in my study on Kolobovsky pereulok, […]

by Editor - Wednesday, June 11th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with President Donald Trump believes – because his opinion pollsters tell him – that pre-emptive attack wins the battleground. That’s to say, the battleground states in US elections. Federalizing California state firefighting troops and ordering them with US Marines – 5,000 of them so far — into action in Los Angeles is […]

by Editor - Wednesday, June 11th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953, lead image) was a serious comedy.  It ends without the outcome the characters had been waiting for so they decide to hang themselves, but they can’t find enough rope. “Well, shall we go? Estragon says to Vladimir in the concluding dialogue of the play. “Yes, let’s go”, […]

by Editor - Tuesday, June 10th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The game of tell-and-consequences begins with a prompt. In response each player must then write down a word or phrase without knowing what word or phrase has been written by the previous players. When the sequence and accumulation of words and phrases from all the players around the table is complete, […]

by Editor - Sunday, June 8th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with With the Oreshnik Moment on pause, who will say what is to be gained, what risked, what lost when President Vladimir Putin decides to play Molotov (lead image, lower right) to these two Ribbentrops (lead image, top left and right)? “We have so much in common”, President Donald Trump was told […]

by Editor - Thursday, June 5th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Lenin hasn’t been a favourite of President Vladimir Putin’s. He’s derided him: “Ukraine appeared in 1922…Now the grateful descendants are smashing monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine.”   The second last time he mentioned Lenin, in February 2024, Putin blamed him. “For some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet […]

by Editor - Wednesday, June 4th, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The point is not whether the June 1 attack on the Tupolev nuclear bombers across Russia can be called a terrorist operation or an act of war; nor is the point whether President Donald Trump was knowing in advance, during or  afterwards; nor is the point whether a proxy intelligence service […]

by Editor - Tuesday, June 3rd, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with On the one hand, there are the words. In the analysis of  Oleg Tsarev, the leading Ukrainian opposition leader now in Crimea, the end-of-war terms presented by the Russian side at Istanbul on Monday afternoon  are “’not an ultimatum at all,’ [Russian delegation head Vladimir] Medinsky has stressed. Of course, Medinsky (lead […]

by Editor - Monday, June 2nd, 2025
No Comments »

By John Helmer  @bears_with Born with a large Russia-hating chip on his shoulder, Cai-Göran Alexander Stubb has been the ideal US Government recruit to be president of Finland. And so, since March 1, 2024, he is. No one in Finnish politics has done as much as Stubb to cancel Finland’s post-war neutrality, drive the country into […]

by Editor - Sunday, June 1st, 2025
No Comments »