By John Helmer, Moscow In the programme for the special form of Russian governance which Vladislav Surkov (lead image, right*) calls Putinism for the next hundred years, there is no power-sharing with businessmen (oligarchs or merchants), social classes, intelligentsia, the Russian Orthodox Church, political parties, parliaments,  the Constitution or  the civil and criminal courts. Rule […]

by Editor - Tuesday, February 19th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow No ambition in Russia runs wider and higher than that of Igor Sechin, 58, chief executive of Rosneft. To help fill the Venezuelan treasury, deter attacks on President Nicolas Maduro, reinforce his army,  and show the world he’s the Russian who can defeat both types of war the US is waging […]

by Editor - Sunday, February 17th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow In February 1989 I started the Moscow Bureau with a first despatch to Ta Nea, then Greece’s leading daily newspaper. That was thirty years ago, a generation in time and several generations in Russian politics. A generation is the time it takes for individuals to grow into adulthood acquiring the shared […]

by Editor - Thursday, February 14th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Leonid Lebedev (lead image, centre), a Russian oil and electricity trader and patron of  Cyprus President Nikos Anastasiades (right),  is set to lose his multi-billion-dollar claim for a stake in the sale of TNK-BP to Rosneft, according to papers  released by the New York State Supreme Court. The Rosneft deal, priced […]

by Editor - Tuesday, February 12th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow For the first time in Oleg Deripaska’s 95-lawsuit history in the British High Court, the aluminium oligarch has been judged by the court to be a liar, a thief, and a thug. “By force or threat of force,” Justice Sir Nigel Teare declared in a judgement published last week, Deripaska had seized […]

by Editor - Tuesday, February 12th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality, the triad of Tsar Nicholas I (lead image, left), is no longer as dead as tsardom. It has been revived by Patriarch Kirill (right), leader of the Russian Orthodox Church; backed by the Kremlin; and is now unopposed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and its […]

by Editor - Thursday, February 7th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill (lead image, 2nd from left) , has proclaimed his church the sovereign  equal of the Russian state, and himself the political equal of the Russian president. The power transfer took place at a Kremlin ceremony last week in front of President Vladimir […]

by Editor - Tuesday, February 5th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Sergei Skripal poisoned himself by accident on March 4, 2018, in the centre of Salisbury. At the time  he was engaged in an operation, freelance or official, which was known to the British intelligence agency MI6. The two Russians, Anatoly Chepiga and Alexander Mishkin, who visited Salisbury on March 3 and […]

by Editor - Thursday, January 31st, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow A bad smell is emitted by those who go about their business claiming to be more virtuous than others when they are not. Take Keith (Konstantin) Gessen’s (lead image) newly published autobiography cum novel about his time in Moscow. The word for the book is a cross between the noun fart […]

by Editor - Wednesday, January 30th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Wiltshire county police have revealed in separate statements last week that they were at the house of Sergei Skripal within minutes of his having fallen ill on a park bench in the centre of Salisbury last year, in the case which has damaged relations between Britain and Russia beyond foreseeable […]

by Editor - Sunday, January 27th, 2019
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