By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Everybody should know by now that bulls are colour blind. They don’t like or dislike the colour red. They are threatened and so they charge, not at the red, but at the waving of the cape, whatever its colour, or at the bull fighter moving around the ring.  Bulls are […]

by Editor - Tuesday, September 19th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with It must be the sea air at Vladivostok that causes temporary clumsiness and misspeaking on the part of President Vladimir Putin (lead image, left) during the carefully orchestrated question-and-answer session of the annual Far Eastern Economic Forum. At the forum in September 2018, asked about British government and media reports […]

by Editor - Tuesday, September 12th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with What’s the truth of how Putin rules Russia?   The longest-serving foreign correspondent in Russia has followed Putin since their first meeting in St Petersburg in November 1991. This is the Putin story which has taken more than thirty years to prepare. It’s the story which the western and Russian […]

by Editor - Monday, September 4th, 2023
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Translated from Colonel Cassad, with afterword by John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Damage control Today it’s a little funny to see the bewilderment from reports of Putin’s meeting with Prigozhin, because, they say, Putin had called Prigozhin a rebel, and then meets with him.

by Editor - Monday, July 10th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In the current war with the US, the monetary policy of the Central Bank of Russia and of its governor, Elvira Nabiullina (lead image, right), has been criticized in the State Duma and in the domestic media for catastrophic negligence in exposing the Bank’s currency reserves to the US freeze […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 9th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The calls have begun in Moscow, starting among the war blogs and battlefield reporters, for keeping intact Yevgeny Prigozhin’s conglomerate of military budget contractors. The reason argued is that they have established themselves so strategically in the logistics of the military services that they cannot be purged without doing greater […]

by Editor - Wednesday, July 5th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Russian regime change is war – it isn’t cricket. Between the US, the UK, and Russia there have been regime-changing games for more than a century now.  Thirty years ago Boris Yeltsin was their big hit.  They have been bad losers since then. In cricketing terms, the Kremlin regime-changing plan […]

by Editor - Sunday, July 2nd, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with When Yevgeny Prigozhin (lead image, right) arrived at Southern Military District headquarters in Rostov, announcing to Lieutenant-General Vladimir Alexeyev that he was on his way Moscow to remove Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, Alexeyev told him “Go get them.” Prigozhin didn’t take […]

by Editor - Wednesday, June 28th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Without the public support of any political figure in Russia, military or police unit, regional governor, or the officers of his Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his thousand rank-and-filers have agreed to return to their base camps on terms negotiated late on Saturday afternoon between Prigozhin and Alexander Lukashenko, the […]

by Editor - Saturday, June 24th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Existentially speaking — which means whether to live and let live, to do or die — how far from a mortal enemy is far enough? In between the one and the other outcome, is there anything but a no man’s land?   Carthago delenda est – “Carthage must be destroyed” […]

by Editor - Tuesday, May 30th, 2023
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