By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with When Igor Kolomoisky (lead image, centre) financed anti-Russian units operating with the Ukrainian Army in the Ukrainian civil war, he was a staunch ally of Petro Poroshenko’s government in Kiev and the Obama Administration’s chief Ukraine policymakers, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (left) and her Assistant Secretary for European Affairs, […]

by Editor - Sunday, June 30th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Stephen Adler (lead image), the American chief executive of Reuters news agency, has ordered into publication three US Government-directed stories targeting the Russian oil company Rosneft —  the first in mid-April, and two published over the past week. Adler’s operations  support US coup plans in Venezuela and US sanctions against […]

by Editor - Monday, June 17th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The semi-annual sale of Russian paintings this week by London’s leading auction houses fell short of proving that demand has overcome five years of wartime pressure and is recovering with the price of crude oil.  The Russian art market remains  unsettled, however, by the disappearance of big Russian bidders who […]

by Editor - Wednesday, June 5th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Not with a bang; almost without a whimper. This is how the oil, real estate and banking empire of Yury Khotin (lead image, left) and his son Alexei Khotin (right) has ended. One of the two men — dubbed in 2015 the Тайнолигархи, the secret oligarchs because they kept their photographs […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 12th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow Botanists can’t say for certain how many hoary old chestnuts, if planted in the right conditions, will turn into a stand of Castanea sativa; that’s the botanical name for chestnut trees. It’s more certain that when Oxford University recently published a book of interviews with eighty wealthy Russians, conducted by a […]

by Editor - Wednesday, September 5th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Over weeks and months of last year,  Adam Waldman (lead image, left), a Washington lobbyist with ties to the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, tried to lure Julian Assange (second from left) into making incriminating admissions to benefit the Democrats’ campaign alleging Russian collusion in Clinton’s defeat by President Donald Trump. […]

by Editor - Sunday, June 24th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Under pressure from the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC),  an accused Swiss art fraudster, Yves Bouvier (lead image, right),  has become the target of new  money-laundering investigations of art dealings involving Russian businessmen. Oleg Deripaska and Suleiman Kerimov (1st left) were hit by US sanctions announced by OFAC […]

by Editor - Monday, May 21st, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow There are two reasons why  the aluminium metal markets are not making long-term bets on the price of the metal, the alumina required to make it, and the share prices of the metal producers, including Russia’s aluminium monopoly United Company Rusal. The first reason is that the US Treasury Secretary Stephen […]

by Editor - Wednesday, April 25th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow US Government economic sanctions have a hundred-year long history in US statutes and court cases, starting in 1917 when the US was at war with Germany. Trading with the Enemy Act was what the first statute was called.   It was clear then who the enemy was, and there was a […]

by Editor - Thursday, April 12th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Central Bank of Russia has authorized Suleiman Kerimov to take shareholding control of Vozrozhdenie Bank from Dmitry and Alexei Ananiev. The negotiation between Kerimov and the Central Bank occurred late last week. The Ananievs were absent abroad. Eight weeks earlier, on December 15, the Central Bank had ousted them from […]

by Editor - Friday, February 23rd, 2018
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