By John Helmer, Moscow Conspiracy or screw-up — there is no shortage of complicated theories in Russia to explain why an oligarch of Vladimir Yevtushenkov’s (image, left) size is being made to run the gauntlet, quite apart from the fact that he’s probably guilty of the crimes alleged against him. What is missing is the […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 8th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow The Ukrainian civil war, and its aftermath, economic warfare between the US, the European Union, and Russia, are transforming the global flows of the minerals from which steel is made. Starting with iron-ore, the future for steelmaking will start at the minehead, not in Australia, nor Brazil, but in West Africa. […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 7th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow If one man aims to prove, all by himself, that Russia is a country ruled by a handful of cronies of the President, that man is Arkady Rostenberg.

by Editor - Sunday, October 5th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow A decade of lawsuits promoted in the UK courts by Sovcomflot’s chief executive, Sergei Frank (right), has ended disastrously with a judgement issued against him and his company in the High Court today.

by Editor - Friday, October 3rd, 2014
No Comments »

by John Helmer - Sunday, August 31st, 2014
No Comments »

  On August 24, 1991, Marshal Sergei Fyodorovich Akhromeyev committed suicide. He had returned from his holiday at Sochi responding to the attempted removal of Mikhail Gorbachev from power. According to the reports of the time, he hanged himself in his Kremlin office, leaving behind a note. One version of what it said was: “I […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, August 24th, 2014
No Comments »

The Nile crocodile and some species of hedgehog and tortoise take a break and sleep through the peak of the summer season. It’s usually called aestivation, and this bear is taking a leaf out of the other animals’ book.

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 31st, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Backstage at the Theatre du Chatelet on May 9, 1909, the curtain had come down on Vatslav Nijinsky’s performance of the Polovtsian Dances, an adaptation to Alexander Borodin’s music of the Tatar warrior dance. The Tatars flaunt their prowess, and their alluring slave girls, before their captive, the defeated Prince Igor. […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 11th, 2014
No Comments »

by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 30th, 2014
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow This year the Moscow School of Management at Skolkovo is planning to publish what it calls a market atlas of the jobs and professions which will be newly needed by the year 2020, and those needed no longer. One of the new ones is what the Skolkovo atlas calls a cyber-cleaner […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, January 12th, 2014
No Comments »