by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There’s an invariable rule of politics the world over. “It was worthwhile making sure of your potential friends,” the English novelist C.P. Snow put into the mouth of a rising cabinet minister in London a half-century ago. “As a rule you couldn’t win over your enemies, but you could lose your […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 19th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It’s an old tsarist ploy. When government officials grow fearful of public protests, attacks on the authorities, and rioting, they increase the volume of alcohol for sale but decrease the number of places where drinkers can gather in public. Vodka is the opium of the people: this has been the Russian […]

by Editor - Monday, July 13th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Pavel Volchkov is an exceptional voice among the Russian scientists now dealing with the corona virus (Covid-19) pandemic. The current Covid-19 policy administrators in Moscow are of the same academic generation but they have trained as doctors;  Volchkov is a geneticist. They have spent their formative careers inside Russian institutions;  Volchkov spent […]

by Editor - Tuesday, July 7th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The ruling issued on July 3 by Dutch district court judge Hendrik Steenhuis (lead image, right) requires the Russian defendant, Lieutenant-Colonel Oleg Pulatov (centre), to prove his innocence with evidence prepared by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU). By the standard announced a month earlier by the Russian Foreign Ministry, this is […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 5th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The presiding judge in the trial of the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 announced on Friday afternoon that he will not allow the evidence of Major-General Igor Konashenkov and other Russian Defence Ministry officers on the Ukrainian Army’s possession of the BUK missile alleged to be the weapon which shot […]

by Editor - Friday, July 3rd, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Nothing like this has been said before by a leader of the Hellenes, Greek or Cypriot. “If we consider a solution through militarisation,” Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades (lead image, right) announced last week. “This will be the end of Cypriot Hellenism, which I do not want.”  What Anastasiades meant was that […]

by Editor - Monday, June 29th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with A politician becomes a psychopath when he or she acts without calculating the consequences for approval rating and voter support. The same thing goes for ministers and their advisers who urge military operations abroad which make voters feel unsafe at home. Fear and insecurity aren’t good for incumbents; at least not […]

by Editor - Sunday, June 21st, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) isn’t likely to have heard the old Australian working-class expression that a man is too crooked to lie straight in bed. It meant that lying and  cheating are in the nature of a deformity, and can’t be operated on or cured.  “The Salisbury Poisonings”, the three-part, […]

by Editor - Tuesday, June 16th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with June 12 marks the anniversary of Boris Yeltsin’s election as President of Russia. It is no moment for celebration. The government which he led successfully over the attempted putsch of last August and through the disintegration of the Soviet Union now lacks credible authority in the Russian federation and among its […]

by Editor - Wednesday, June 10th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Just over a year ago, five New York Times reporters published lies about the dead ducks they were told had been killed by Russian assassins running amok in the English town of Salisbury with a poison they called Novichok. This was a lie which came from the deputy director of the […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 31st, 2020
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