by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with A two-month delay in Russian missile strikes against Ukrainian electricity infrastructure west of the Dnieper River and  secret talks on end-of-war terms by the Kremlin go-between Vladimir Medinsky (lead image, right) produced two signals from Kiev on Monday – one an offer by Vladimir Zelensky to reciprocate with a limit on […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi was murdered on October 20, 2011, and to mark the thirteenth anniversary of his death, the Russian Foreign Ministry received Qaddafi’s daughter, Aisha Qaddafi, in Moscow on Friday. This is the first open meeting in Russia between high-ranking Russian officials and the Qaddafi family. The political […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 20th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with “The winners of the war are the Russian General Staff. Everyone in Russia understands that the Russian Army is winning and will win this war…I believe Gilbert is wrong on the history of the negotiations that have gone on since before this war began… It’s [Russian] military protection that guarantees [Ukrainian] […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 17th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with According to the Russian Constitution amendments adopted in 2020,  Vladimir Putin can run for re-election in 2030 and win another term until 2036, when he will be 84. The contest over the presidential succession may thus be postponed for another decade. Or else it is under way already. That’s one of […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with If you want to understand who is winning the American war against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, and also in the world’s commodity trade markets, you can start by calculating the life expectancy of a NATO-trained Ukrainian soldier on the front line, or of a NATO staff officer in a command […]

by Editor - Friday, October 11th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The Russian history of end-of-war negotiations for the capitulation of Germany and for the World War II peace settlement requires it to be understood now: it was the Red Army’s defeat of the enemy on the battlefield all the way to Berlin which preceded and which was the precondition for the […]

by Editor - Wednesday, October 9th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Pokrovsk, in the northwestern corner of Donetsk region, is almost a Russian city again. Established as a minor Russian rail junction in 1880, it was badly damaged by the Italians and Germans who captured the city between 1941 and 1943, killing more than 8,000 Red Army defenders, 5,000 residents, and all […]

by Editor - Friday, October 4th, 2024
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By Gilbert Doctorow in Brussels*  @bears_with As a rule, on these pages I (Gilbert Doctorow, lead image) do not write critiques or responses to the writings of others, but today will be an exception.  A colleague in Germany sent me the link below to a remarkable essay by John Helmer which is too important to ignore. […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 1st, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with “The law is an ass” is an English expression of almost four hundred years of age. While credit for inventing the very first use of it has been argued over, there is no doubt that it was Charles Dickens in his Oliver Twist of 1838 who began the popularity of combining law […]

by Editor - Monday, September 30th, 2024
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by Slobodan Despot, Montreux, and John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A plea bargain for the Russian Telegram owner Pavel Durov (aka Paul Du Rove, lead image lower right)) has been arranged in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron (upper right) by their common friend, Xavier Niel (upper left), a French internet billionaire with a history of his own  internet sex […]

by Editor - Sunday, September 29th, 2024
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