By John Helmer in Moscow A lion, who copies a lion, is an ape. That is Victor Hugo, France’s 19th century poet hero, talking of the difference between writers and hacks. If Hugo had lowered (or raised) himself to think of steelmakers, his remark might inspire sceptical reflection on what is really happening in the […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
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MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) — What is it that is drawing Russians like Victor Vekselberg and Alisher Usmanov to South Africa? In Russian villages, the peasants used to say that where there’s honey, there will always be flies. By that, they mean flies, not bees – raiders, not producers. For Vekselberg, manganese is the honey; for Usmanov, […]

by John Helmer - Friday, February 3rd, 2006
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MOSCOW (Mineweb.com) – At the start of Raymond Chandler’s last novel,the private detective Philip Marlowe is on watch at the Los Angeles railway station. “There was nothing to it,” he says to himself. “The subject was easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.” Later, after trailing her to a hotel room down […]

by John Helmer - Monday, December 12th, 2005
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Although Russian steelmaking is booming, so too is iron-ore mining. As the only one of Russia’s steel mills without a significant supply of iron-ore of its own, Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine, Russia’s largest steelmill, is unhappy to have discovered this week that a domestic rival may take control of most of its iron-ore supply. In the […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 21st, 2005
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MOSCOW – Andrei lllarionov is a coward, but President Vladimir Putin isn’t strong enough to say so. This makes the lllarionov case the very opposite of what Putin’s enemies in the media are claiming. lllarionov is one of the leftovers of the laissez-faire, free-for-a-few economics of the Boris Yeltsin era (1991-99). Married to an American […]

by John Helmer - Friday, January 14th, 2005
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MOSCOW – Despite a threat to take “strategic and tactical steps” against Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, Moscow entrepreneur Alisher Usmanov is bluffing, and not for the first time. Usmanov made his threat in a report appearing in the March 16 issue of the Financial Times, which was characteristically impressed by the Russian bravado, and just as […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 17th, 2004
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