By John Helmer, Moscow Radoslaw Sikorski (lead image, right) plotted with the owner of Polish coalmines and electricity plants to use European Union sanctions against Russia to stop imports of rival, low-cost Russian coal in the Polish market. A clandestine tape-recording of a conversation between Sikorski, who was Poland’s foreign minister at the time, and […]

by Editor - Friday, November 6th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Noone holds Chrystia Freeland in higher esteem than she does. When she was the Financial Times correspondent in Moscow, she would react to correction or criticism by screaming down the telephone receiver. That’s when, among her fellow reporters, she picked up the Hysteria Freeland handle. That also is the assessment, according […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 5th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow For the first time in the international art auction market, paintings of the Soviet period between 1930 and 1990 have been auctioned in London, setting market benchmarks for several of the styles and genres included in the show, and a multi-million pound record for Aleksandr Deineka, a Moscow-based artist who died […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 4th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Since the US started the regime dominoes falling in Kiev in February 2014, the Polish regime has already toppled, and the French one is doomed – President Francois Hollande will be defeated by every one of the candidates now running to succeed him, including Marine Le Pen of the National Front. […]

by Editor - Monday, November 2nd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow If it wasn’t for a Russian, Americans wouldn’t be able to lick large lollipops. Samuel Born – it isn’t known what his original Russian name was – emigrated to the US at the end of the 19th century. There he invented an apparatus he called the Born Sucker Machine. Its function […]

by Editor - Friday, October 30th, 2015
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CLICK TO ENLARGE By John Helmer, Moscow Investigations into the collapse of National Bank Trust, one of the largest Moscow banks to be rescued by the Central Bank of Russia and the Deposit Insurance Agency, have targeted a Cyprus-based management group as the operational headquarters of a scheme which, according to current calculations, may have […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 28th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The commodity supercycle made an offshore fortune for Oleg Deripaska, control shareholder of United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, and for Glencore, the Swiss combine which has financed and managed Rusal’s trade. But the cycle is now in reverse, as the markets accept that China’s economic performance will now trigger […]

by Editor - Friday, October 23rd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Yury Trutnev, the Kremlin’s special representative for the Russian Fareast, has come up with a scheme, starting this month, for storing the world’s most valuable art works in Vladivostok, one of the world’s smallest art markets, with the personal backing of President Vladimir Putin; and on the advice of Dmitry Rybolovlev, […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 21st, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow Tjibbe Joustra (lead image, right), chairman of the Dutch Safety Board, wants it to be very clear that Russia is criminally responsible for the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014; that a Russian-supplied ground-to-air missile, fired on Russian orders from territory under Russian control, exploded lethally to […]

by Editor - Monday, October 19th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) conclusion on the missile detonation which caused the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17 is based on a report of the Dutch National Aerospace Laboratory (NLR), based in Amsterdam. The 66-page NLR report can be found as an appendix to the main DSB report. Combined in their […]

by Editor - Friday, October 16th, 2015
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