by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Mikhail Mishustin, the prime minister appointed by President Vladimir Putin on the evening of January 15, would be disqualified from holding office when the new eligibility rule which Putin proposed earlier that day becomes law. This is because Mishustin’s mother is reported to be of Armenian nationality, and under Armenian law […]

Filed under: DwB, Russian Politics by Editor - Monday, February 3rd, 2020
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with When the Germans rolled through Russian defences in the Operation Barbarossa invasion of June 1941, the Soviet commander-in-chief Joseph Stalin ordered the executions of dozens of western army unit and air force commanders. Stalin’s reasons at the time were his suspicion of their treason;  a demonstration effect throughout the armed forces; […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Sunday, September 14th, 2025
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with For their daily bread, Russians pay much less than the citizens of the US, the European Union, and other bread-eating states in the warfighting alliance.  At current prices, the Russian loaf of white bread is cheaper by almost seven times than the American; six times less than the Norwegian; four times […]

Filed under: Foodstuffs by Editor - Wednesday, February 12th, 2025
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with President Vladimir Putin gave a party rally speech in Moscow on Saturday in which he omitted to mention seven of the eight domestic issues most troubling Russian voters – inflation; high interest-rate caused stagnation in the economy; corruption;  low quality education;  poor public health care; terrorism; and illegal immigrants.   He […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Saturday, December 14th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with If you want to understand who is winning the American war against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, and also in the world’s commodity trade markets, you can start by calculating the life expectancy of a NATO-trained Ukrainian soldier on the front line, or of a NATO staff officer in a command […]

Filed under: DwB by Editor - Friday, October 11th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Russian pollsters have published no nationwide surveys of Russian public responses to the Crocus City Hall attack on March 22 in the immediate aftermath, nor in the days which have followed the capture of the four gunmen and release of evidence of their links to the Ukraine.   A Ukrainian propaganda […]

Filed under: Ukraine by Editor - Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On March 5, in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR), there was a fire-bombing of a French–owned brewery which destroyed 50,000 bottles of beer. On August 23, a private jet of the Wagner Group was bombed in the air north of Moscow, and the Wagner leaders, Yevgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin, […]

Filed under: Africa-Russia, Oligarchs, Ukraine by Editor - Tuesday, September 5th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the current war with the US, the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Russia and of its governor, Elvira Nabiullina (lead image, right), has been criticized in the State Duma and in the domestic media for catastrophic negligence in exposing the Bank’s currency reserves to the US freeze […]

Filed under: Russian Politics by Editor - Sunday, July 9th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the history of the privatization of Russia’s industrial polluters no oligarch has been dirtier, penalized more often,  and avoided court and state regulators more regularly than the steel, coke and coal producer, Igor Zyuzin. No one has more faithfully and profitably lobbied for Zyuzin’s benefit in parliament and government […]

Filed under: Oligarchs, Russian Politics by Editor - Thursday, April 20th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A new presidential decree issued yesterday by the Kremlin ends the special measures for foreign currency and capital control issued since the start of the special military operation in the Ukraine on February 24.   Instead, a special commission of government officials and the board of directors of the Russian Central […]

Filed under: Oligarchs, UK-Russia, US-Russia by Editor - Friday, June 10th, 2022
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