By John Helmer, Moscow Majorities of voters in the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine believe there is no candidate running for the presidential election planned for May 25, whom they trust with a vote to represent their interests. With two months still to go, the outcome of the poll is therefore already decided – […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 13th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow Georhii Rudko, the chairman of the Ukrainian State Commission for Natural Resources, had nothing to do with the choice of the old British War Office as the venue; nor the timing of his speech, one day before the President of Ukraine and the constitutional order of the country were toppled. But […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 12th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow Winston Churchill likened his inability to know what happens in Moscow to a case of bulldogs fighting under a rug. Ivan Glasenberg (right), chief executive of GlencoreXstrata, and Oleg Deripaska (left), chief executive of United Company Rusal — secretive though they are — are too fond of each other to fight. […]

by John Helmer - Monday, March 10th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow On March 4 the Chinese and South African governments announced they are preparing an agreement on nuclear cooperation to allow the Chinese to sell $50 billion worth of their nuclear reactor technology for South Africa’s power generation programme. There are four catches. One is that a South African report from the […]

by John Helmer - Friday, March 7th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow The White House record claims that on the afternoon of Friday, February 21, President Barack Obama initiated a telephone call to President Vladimir Putin. But the US version of what was said claims Obama committed himself to supporting the agreement which President Victor Yanukovich had signed early on the same day […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 5th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow A new type of warfare is being tested in Ukraine. The strategem was first publicly disclosed on February 23, when Zbigniew Brzezinski — the wannabe Secretary of State if the Democratic Party wins the 2016 presidential election — proposed a billion-dollar levy on each of ten Ukrainian oligarchs. Brzezinski didn’t identify […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 4th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow After almost a year of inconclusive negotiations with a secretive South African group called Nemascore, Evraz, the Russian steelmaker and miner, has announced to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange that negotiations have opened to sell its control stake in Highveld Steel & Vanadium to new buyers. The notice to the exchange last […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 27th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow Not every despotic and corrupt ruler of a former Soviet state is the target of US Government plots to overthrow him, not even those whose taste in interior decoration and jewellery is as awful as Victor Yanukovich’s, the ex-president of Ukraine. Emomali Rahmon (image), the president of Tajikistan since 1992, has […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 26th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow A Russian declaration of war and the despatch of troops to secure the Crimea would be very serious things, if they materialized. The Financial Times reporter, Kathrin Hille (image), is the only person in the entire world who claims to have been told by “a senior government official”: “If Ukraine breaks […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow Would you buy a used car from David Bonderman (lead image), Dmitry Shvets, and Jan Dunning if you knew they registered their businesses in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Cayman Islands, and Bahamas; kept their takings out of their companies and in their pockets; and were more heavily indebted to the […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 20th, 2014
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