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 […]

by Editor - Monday, November 11th, 2024
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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, […]

by Editor - Sunday, November 10th, 2024
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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 […]

by Editor - Sunday, November 10th, 2024
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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 […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 5th, 2024
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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 […]

by Editor - Tuesday, November 5th, 2024
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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 […]

by Editor - Monday, November 4th, 2024
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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 […]

by Editor - Saturday, October 26th, 2024
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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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