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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This is the comic book version of what really happened, as revealed by the clumsiest judge in  England – Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley, lead image, right). Even if all the evidence presented to Hughes and already endorsed by him is true – on the record of six and […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In politics — the Kremlin is no exception — politicians don’t mean what they say.  In gardening, the plants always mean what they say. Gardeners, obliged to record what that is, are more likely than politicians to tell the truth. In the records of Russian politicians since the Bolshevik Revolution, only […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with On Sunday afternoon the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that a massive strike of air and sea-launched missiles and drones have struck and destroyed parts of the Ukrainian electricity grid in the western regions of the country, as well as in Odessa and Nikolaev in the southeast.   The Mukachevo interconnector station […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Between wishful thinking and delusional thinking in normal life, there can be the psychiatrist’s couch and prescription of Prozac capsules swallowed once a day.   In politics – Russian politics are no exception – there can be media debate so that in between plan, action, and outcome it is possible to […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Vladimir Putin, September 5, 2024: “As for my preferences, it is not up to us to decide. After all, the American people will have to make their own choice. As I have already said, we favoured Mr Biden, the current President, but they took him out of the race. That said, […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with To reflect upon, today’s Sabbath reading comes from two Russian texts. One was a prepared script followed by impromptu elaboration which took place in Sochi on November 7. The second text followed in Moscow after the notorious football match in Amsterdam which happened later on the same day. The first reading […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The British Government’s narrative that Russian military agents, on orders from President Vladimir Putin, used Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018 continues to collapse. A secret chemical warfare agent revealed last week that two  tests for Novichok, using special machines provided by the Porton Down chemical warfare laboratory,  failed to confirm […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with For more than two months now, President Vladimir Putin’s orders to the General Staff have been to shorten the range of the electric war campaign to the area east of Kiev and the Dnieper River,  and west of the advancing line of Russian forces. The General Staff have responded by limiting […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It’s a pity when a 760-page history of the Russian leadership’s thinking during the Cold War period, 1945 to 2022, earns consignment to the  waste bin within the first nineteen pages, and in just three sentences. This ratio of toxicity to prolixity – 1 to 40 — is exceptional, although the […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Ragpicking is a serious women’s business, extracting value from rubbish. Cheerleading is the unserious business of girls waving pompoms at football games. There are those who claim the Kazan Declaration is today’s equivalent of the Bretton Woods Final Act (1944) and Bandung Declaration (1955),  or “a huge manifesto”, or “victory for […]