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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Paper tiger German tanks, delivered on the insistence of lame-duck Ukrainian politicians, will become sitting ducks on the battlefield, while the economic front of the war against Russia is looking more and more like the story of over-confidence and guile as told by Uncle Remus to generations of American children. That’s […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with As democracy goes in states at war, in Russia  there is more of it —  faction fighting, public criticism,  media debate — about battlefield operations, wins and losses, than there is on the NATO side, in the US, Canada, Germany, France or England. By contrast, on the conduct of domestic economic […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with All states give titles, awards and medals to individuals who contribute exceptionally on the battlefield, in civilian life, and also in financing elections. The British House of Lords would be empty without soldiers who saved the monarch’s throne and businessmen who paid for the prime minister’s seat. In Russia there is […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who is under British and European Union sanctions, is lobbying in Washington for an early peace deal with the Ukraine. According to a document Abramovich has filed through the New York law firm of Kobre & Kim, Abramovich has told the US Department of Justice (DOJ) […]

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by John Helmer, Moscow  @bears_with A new presidential decree issued yesterday by the Kremlin ends the special measures for foreign currency and capital control issued since the start of the special military operation in the Ukraine on February 24.   Instead, a special commission of government officials and the board of directors of the Russian Central […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Catherine Belton (lead image, left), a reporter on Russia for the Financial Times and Reuters, was abandoned this week by her publisher, Rupert Murdoch’s (right) HarperCollins, and obliged to sign an out-of-court settlement in London with Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven of Alfa Bank and the LetterOne group. The publisher has agreed […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Accused Russian bank robber Vadim Belyaev (lead picture) – US alias Vadim Wolfson – has won an order from the New York State Supreme Court dismissing the claims of his pursuers, National Trust Bank (NBT, Trust) and Otkritie Bank of Moscow, on condition he registers himself as a defendant in the […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Two Swiss bankers charged with money-laundering crimes in aid of the fugitive Russian banker Sergei Pugachev went before the Swiss federal criminal court last week. The trial was brief;  no reporters were present; and the lawyers are trying to keep the bankers’ names secret. They refuse to say if the verdict […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Two Swiss bankers will go on trial this week in the Swiss Federal Criminal Court charged with money-laundering offences when they supervised and assisted the movement out of Russia, then  through Switzerland,  of at least 700 million Swiss francs. The money was moved by Sergei Pugachev (lead image, left) between 2008 […]

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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with For the first time, the US-based international media agency Reuters is being sued for lying about Russia in the British High Court. The three defendants in the dock are Catherine Belton (lead image, right); her source, runaway bank robber Sergei Pugachev; and Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, HarperCollins. Roman Abramovich (left) has […]