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By John Helmer, Moscow Alrosa has announced new strategic targets until the end of 2021, following this week’s meeting of the Supervisory Board, as Alrosa’s board of directors is known. How much of the projected growth will depend on Alrosa getting the Kremlin to persuade Vagit Alekperov of LUKoil to do what he doesn’t want […]

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By John Helmer in Moscow No sooner had De Beers and Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC) revived last Friday, September 4, their US litigation plan of attack against LUKoil and its senior management, headed by Vagit Alekperov, than Alekperov issued an unprecedented statement saying he is thinking of selling out of diamonds altogether. Until now,Alekperov has […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Alexei Kudrin (lead image) — the state finance factotum President Vladimir Putin promoted for his entire federal government career until in the war against the Ukraine and the US the president couldn’t protect him any longer —  has lost his half-billion dollar payoff. Kudrin’s long-held ambition to succeed Putin in the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with As democracy goes in states at war, in Russia  there is more of it —  faction fighting, public criticism,  media debate — about battlefield operations, wins and losses, than there is on the NATO side, in the US, Canada, Germany, France or England. By contrast, on the conduct of domestic economic […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Next year it will be four hundred years since the Amboyna Massacre of March 9, 1623. The British won’t be memorializing their countrymen’s killings by the Dutch, nor the Dutch celebrating one of the last gasps of their Asian empire. They are now allies in the fabrication of reasons for killing […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Russian regime-change theory motivating US sanctions against the Russian oligarchs is that they will trigger a palace coup in which the oligarchs will arrange a bullet for President Vladimir Putin’s head, and in return the US will give them back the keys to their yachts, mansions, and offshore bank accounts. […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with An attempt is underway to arrange a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to restore the agreement on oil production cuts which MbS broke at the March 6 meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries with Russia (OPEC+).  The Crown Prince is […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with If Russian money talks,  there can be no doubt it is telling President Vladimir Putin to give Russia’s relationship with Turkey a priority comparable, almost, with China and India. The  message eliminates Greece from the Kremlin’s consideration; it also diminishes Cyprus. But does this mean there is a powerful Turkish […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow Mother Nature, Greenpeace  and the National Geographic Magazine believe that killer whales  (lead image, left) are predators of the sea who have been misnamed. They are dolphins who kill whales (also seals, sea lions, sharks, and occasionally, when they get upset, a zoo-keeper). In Chelyabinsk, environment investigators  and city residents  believe […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow US Government economic sanctions have a hundred-year long history in US statutes and court cases, starting in 1917 when the US was at war with Germany. Trading with the Enemy Act was what the first statute was called.   It was clear then who the enemy was, and there was a […]