By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Football is the most popular sport Russians like to play and like to watch. Ice hockey comes second. The connexion between football and ice hockey, apples and tomatoes is that Gennady Timchenko (lead image left) is the sanctioned oligarch who is now moving into domestic production of apples to substitute for […]

by Editor - Monday, February 27th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with The Massachusetts philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was making a mistake when he claimed “there are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.”  Although he grew pears himself, Emerson isn’t known to have made them into pear cider, also known as poiré in France, perry […]

by Editor - Wednesday, February 8th, 2023
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The reason for rising discontent among Russians is obvious – except to the Anglo-American and German press and the governments prompting them. All Russians know this except for the young living at home, dependent on their family’s income. The prices for the food in the family grocery basket have been rising […]

by Editor - Sunday, February 7th, 2021
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The Russian potato is a hot potato politically for President Vladimir Putin. Much hotter than Alexei Navalny, and for a genuine, homegrown reason. The Russian potato harvest suffered its worst fall last year since 2010. And the political chips will fall just as they did before – the public approval rating for […]

by Editor - Sunday, January 31st, 2021
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by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Vkusville sounds half Russian, half French. Piquant, you might say – пикантный. The name can be translated into English as Taste Town. But for the name of a new chain of food stores this sounds so hackneyed that in your average American or British town you would expect to find there […]

by Editor - Thursday, November 12th, 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 This is the Bangsamoro banana, and somebody is slipping on it. On April 4 two young business partners, a Russian named Lev Dengov and a Turkmen, Merdan Gurbanov, with no known source of capital or past business record, signed an agreement to invest almost $600 million in the Bangsamoro region of […]

by Editor - Sunday, April 28th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Alcoholics have ruled Russia in the past, but for the first time in Russian history a producer of alcohol, a winemaker, is running for president in the March election.   Boris Titov, owner of Abrau-Durso whose shares are listed on the Moscow stock exchange, is careful to avoid speaking to the voters […]

by Editor - Monday, January 15th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow President Vladimir Putin is the bee’s knees. There’s noone to beat him, electionwise. But when it comes to feeding Russians the genuine article, Putin’s promise is a honey trap. Naturally, we are talking only of the business of Russian beekeeping, honey production and trade. Eighteen months after Putin listened to a […]

by Editor - Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017
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By John Helmer, Moscow Medovukha, Russia’s fermented honey drink known in English as mead, is at least one thousand years old. If it’s what the Greeks meant by ambrosia, the nectar of the gods, then it is as ancient as wine, Dionysos’s tipple. Whether Rurik the Viking* brought mead with him to ancient Rus, or […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 29th, 2017
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