By John Helmer, Moscow

In the seedier studios of California, when the director cries “We’ve got wood!” he means the male lead has an erection, and it’s his cue to start his business while the cameras roll at a pornographic scene. Russia’s plywood business isn’t as sexy, but it’s faster growing and bigger too. It’s also becoming a oligopoly for Alexei Mordashov, who is already the well-known oligarch of the Russian steel and mining sectors.

Mordashov (lead image) met President Vladimir Putin in January. He claims he got the president’s go-ahead to build a new wood-processing complex at the village of Suda, outside Cherepovets. Public opposition is fierce – so fierce that the Kremlin is concealing what exactly Putin and Mordashov said about the project at their meeting; how much state money will be given to Mordashov for the scheme; and what Putin intends to do next. Not since Putin took sides with the locals in Irkutsk region against Oleg Deripaska’s paper and pulp plant on the edge of Lake Baikal, has there been such a test of Russians, oligarchs, the President – and who has wood.
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by Editor - Monday, June 22nd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In publishing on Russia, there comes a time when a writer, journalist, bank analyst, television presenter, or academic produces something so lacking in truthfulness, so replete with fawning and meretriciousness, that this website must kill and skin another goat; dry out the vellum; and have a fresh scroll inscribed with the Cat’s Paw – that’s the Personal Abasement Award (PAW).

This award is designed to encourage accountability and ethical reporting on Russia. The PAW committee decided to suspend the Cat’s Paw awards when the start of the Ukraine civil war threatened to overwhelm the supply of vellum and the goat population on which it depends. The goats who have earned the Cat’s PAW scroll have also multiplied exponentially.
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by Editor - Wednesday, June 17th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Records uncovered in Canada reveal that Oleg Deripaska’s (lead image, right) Moscow holding EN+, which is the controlling shareholder of United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, is controlled by Cash Titan Mining Corporation Group Ltd. This company has an office at 1 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto, Ontario. The premises exist, but the company doesn’t — at least not in the federal Canadian and Ontario company registers. How can such a phantom represent itself as the offshore owner, and what part does it play in the plan Rusal announced in 2013 “for the transfer of financial and economic activity to the territory of Russia”?

The answer ought to be available from Philippe Mailfait, a 64-year old French national and Montreal businessman, who sits on the board of EN+ as an “independent director”. Cash Titan Mining lists Mailfait as its only director. But Mailfait
cannot be found, and EN+ won’t confirm he exists.
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by Editor - Tuesday, June 16th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

What to do if you are a Russian mining company with a billion dollars’ worth of asset exposure securing large debts, and your chain of production is struck at start and finish by corruption scandals, international litigation, popular protest, collapse of government authority, and homicidal violence? The solution is to pretend to your bankers you aren’t Russian — and privately beg the Kremlin for help.

That is what the Solway Group of companies has been doing at its nickel mine in central Guatemala, and at its ferronickel refinery in southeast Ukraine. Asked about Solway’s Russian roots by a Ukrainian reporter last month, Solway’s chief executive Daniel Bronstein replied that “Solway Investment Group is a Cyprus-based international industrial group with a 100% EU capital and operational offices in Luxemburg, Switzerland and Estonia.”

At almost the same time, a Russian source in Guatemala City said the Russian Ambassador, Nikolai Babich, had been to see the President of Guatemala, Otto Molina, to ask for his intervention on behalf of the mine’s Russian management and the Solway owners.
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by Editor - Wednesday, June 10th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the history of warfare there is nothing new in the engagement of mercenaries to do the fighting and run the risks. The mamelukes (mamluks) were the most successful at the game — they started as slaves, became a warfighting caste, and ended as the rulers of the countries they captured, including Egypt and Syria from 1250 to 1517, and Iraq from 1704 to 1831. They defeated the European Crusaders. From then on, the term mameluke, when applied to someone in Europe, meant slavish obedience — the antithesis of independence. Napoleon employed a corps of them, and his long-serving bodyguard was one.

Sir Roderic Lyne (lead image, 3rd from left) is the number-2 executive in charge of the Royal Institute for International affairs (RIIA), known by its residence in London as Chatham House. Insiders say Lyne, a former British ambassador to Russia, has captured the organization, and turned it into a warfighting unit against Russia, though, the sources say, not without a fight. Amongst the organization’s members and financiers, opponents of the Lyne line against Russia accuse him of suppressing independence, and by promoting war against Russia of violating the Chatham House charter.
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by Editor - Monday, June 8th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The scaffolding is going up around the walls of Chatham House in London — we shall not see it dismantled again in our lifetime. Not even if the Royal Institute of International Affairs says it is doing no more than a repaint job.

According to a fresh report from inside the building, issued on June 4, it’s time to strike at Russia with “defensive strategic communications and media support…promoting truthful accounts of Western policies and values… through EU and NATO cooperation.”

In the City of London this is known as talking one’s book. On Madison Avenue, in New York City, it’s called advertising. Chatham House is applying for money for former British government officials to write reports to US, British and NATO intelligence agencies for the job of winning over, or neutralizing, those who are victims of Russian disinformation because they don’t believe what the US, British and NATO intelligence agencies have been telling them. The more incredible this proposition sounds, the more urgently Sir Roderic Lyne and Sir Andrew Wood and several other Chatham House apparatchiki say they need the money.
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by Editor - Thursday, June 4th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The semi-annual Russian art sales in London this week have finally responded to the laws of economics and politics. But softcore girlies and boy’s buttocks drew better than their estimated money shots, demonstrating that even on the eastern front, making love, not war, is still good for the art house.
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by Editor - Wednesday, June 3rd, 2015
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John Helmer, Moscow

Russia survived the threat of a homosexual boycott of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games, handily. But can it survive the threatened boycott of the 2018 World Cup from a wannabe candidate to lead a minority party in the House of Commons; a British prince whose chance of becoming king is, failing accidents, at least 20 years off; and four US senators, one of whom has been indicted for taking bribes himself. The answer is yes – Russia will survive even this; and also what President Vladimir Putin has called a case of the US “illegally persecuting people”.

For the moment, though, no Russian owner of an international football team is willing to go public with a defence of Russia’s World Cup. Nor are they willing to endorse Putin’s claim that the US corruption charges against officials of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) are a political plot for “ulterior purposes”. Against Russia, Putin means.
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by Editor - Monday, June 1st, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Anne Applebaum, wife of the ex-Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, has suffered a 42% drop in her earnings last year, since the war against Russia, which Sikorski and she (Siklebaum, for short) have promoted in London, Warsaw and Washington, lost the big money backing it drew in 2013. The Applebaum loss is even sharper than the collapsing Ukrainian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) caused by the war. It is falling at a rate of 17.6%, according to the latest release from the Ukrainian statistics agency.
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by Editor - Wednesday, May 27th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the royal courts of olden times, the king’s favourite was showered with rewards for making the king happy, not for making the court or country happy with the king. PR was not what Barbara de Villiers did for Charles II, nor Madame de Pompadour for Louis XV.

At United Company Rusal, the state aluminium monopoly, Vera Kurochkina (lead image, left) is Director of Corporate Communications, a title she’s held since 2006. For three years earlier she was called head of Rusal’s media relations. To company insiders she is the favourite of chief executive Oleg Deripaska. According to the company’s financial report for 2014, she was paid $1.236 million. That sets the public record for PR directors in Russia’s exchange-listed, state-owned, and most heavily indebted companies.
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by Editor - Tuesday, May 26th, 2015
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