MOSCOW – When the announcement came last Friday that Roman Abramovich had decided to put a temporary stop, possibly a permanent one, to the merger between his Siberian Oil Company (Sibneft), and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Yukos, Abramovich’s lawyer, Andrei De Cort, took ill, and stopped taking calls. He then left the country. Yukos board member and […]

by John Helmer - Monday, May 12th, 2003
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One of the benefits the restoration of Christianity has brought Russia is that almost all Russian politicians can say that God is on their side, The Church hasn’t been especially helpful, however, in inculcating the lesson that, for more than a thousand years of European history, the real fight hasn’t been between God and the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, May 6th, 2003
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The oil industry in Russia has developed so quickly that current pipelines cannot handle the outflow. Now, it is up to the government and oil industry officials, both in-and outside of Russia, to decide the next step. A decision signaled by the Kremlin last month, to authorize the construction of a new oil pipeline to […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 9th, 2003
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It’s stupid to shoot the messenger. That’s a message the billion-dollar Russian corporate public-relations industry fails to understand because it pays so often, and so lavishly, for distorting the truth, it can’t believe there isn’t a rival or a hostile commercial plot at work when the unvarnished truth slips out unexpectedly. Take, for example, Russia’s […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, March 22nd, 2003
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MOSCOW – The English and North Americans have never been much good at analyzing Russia, and they haven’t gotten better. A long time fighting an enemy can make you wary, without becoming wise. But in war neither time nor experience need make any difference to who wins, who loses. Kremlinology was a wartime industry, and […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, March 22nd, 2003
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The only foreign phrase that managed to lodge itself correctly in the brain of Ronald Reagan, before he developed Alzheimer’s disease but after he became president of the United States, was “doveryai no proveryai.” As he never tired of explaining, that’s Russian for “trust but verify,” Reagan and his successors always meant to apply that […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, March 15th, 2003
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Liberty! Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!” The person who said that was Marie Jeanne Roland. They were her last words. She was four months short of her 40th birthday when, sharp at half-past three on a dull November afternoon in Paris, the guillotine cut her head off. The charge for which she […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 21st, 2003
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Last week, when we last visited Mikhail Fridman and Viktor Vekselberg, the controlling shareholders of Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK), we found them in the shrubbery desperately trying to sell off their loot. For more than a year, they had been offering minority-sized stakes in the oil company. But, after doing their due diligence, Chevron-Texaco and […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 14th, 2003
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It was during the brief period of the New Economic Policy (NEP), which began in 1921, that Lenin and the Soviet authorities had the thought that, in order to improve the redistribution of wealth, it was necessary to generate some wealth to start with. This hilarious idea produced a dazzling display of satirical writing by […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 7th, 2003
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For the first time ever, Russian workers are threatening to strike in a dispute union leaders directly blame on the tactics of the oligarch who controls the shareholding of Norilsk Nickel. Also for the first time, the unions are demanding that corporate transparency include the disclosure of the oligarch’s perquisites, including the salaries paid to […]

by John Helmer - Friday, January 24th, 2003
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