By John Helmer, Moscow The last time Russian beer drinkers did something unusual was in the unseasonably cool summer of 2011, when sales of the big brand beers dropped sharply. Read all about it. It is happening again, on this occasion during winter, only now the drop in consumption is even more dramatic. This time […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, May 8th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Russian government has forced the chief executive of the state-owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) to resign. Andrei Dyachkov, who was appointed to run the shipyard holding in June of last year, signed a letter of resignation on April 30, and then took sick leave. He is reportedly in hospital for […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, May 7th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Righteous indignation is to investigative journalism what Joseph Goebbels was to truth. So what was really going on in the last days of April when the London media celebrated the Russians who this year topped the UK Rich List, but discovered something going badly, maybe criminally wrong at Eurasian Natural Resources […]

by John Helmer - Monday, May 6th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Nigerian judge Okechukwu Okeke has retired from his Lagos court rather than appear for the trial, scheduled in Lagos on April 30, of the Russian crew of the security tender, Myre Seadiver. Sources in Lagos told Fairplay the trial has been postponed for a second time on account of the […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, May 5th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow In the research for its profile on Alisher Usmanov, BBC Radio-4 was told by its sources in Russia that claims Usmanov is close to the Kremlin have been invented; and that Usmanov has never been granted a personal audience with President (Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin. The BBC programme was broadcast on […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Alisher Usmanov’s fortune began with a business of making plastic bags when they were in short supply in Moscow in the last days of the USSR. At least, that’s the asset in the self-start, self-made fortune story which reporters for global rich lists have been persuaded to believe about Usmanov. How […]

by John Helmer - Monday, April 29th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow At the freedom-flush Moscow parties of the 1990s, I was never sure whether Alexander Venediktov (2) was real, or a Vladimir Mamyshev-Monroe (1) impersonation. Mamyshev-Monroe died last month in what is described as a shallow swimming pool in Indonesia. Venediktov is alive, and like Mamyshev-Monroe does his radio turns on Ekho-Moskvy […]

by John Helmer - Friday, April 26th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow At a physicists’ teaparty, Albert Einstein once asked Niels Bohr whether the two of them should accept that “the moon does not exist if nobody is looking at it.” Bohr’s reply was that, hard as Einstein might try, so long as the moon was accompanied by noone, Einstein’s proof would be […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow If necessity is generally judged to be the mother of invention, crude invention – the fake that is exposed swiftly – is generally the product of desperate mothers. The idea that the Oppenheimer family is keen to buy Alrosa shares, reported by one Moscow business newspaper yesterday and reinforced by another, […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow United Company Rusal has been defeated in a brief but powerful ruling by the US Court of Appeals in New York last week. The order by three judges, issued on April 15, quashes a lower-level US court order for discovery of bank and other evidence against shipping companies Rusal used to […]

by John Helmer - Monday, April 22nd, 2013
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