By John Helmer, Moscow

Mikhail Prokhorov thinks that his American basketball franchise, the Brooklyn (née New Jersey) Nets has grown eightfold in value in the five years since he acquired it for $223 million. For the time being, though, noone agrees with him. That’s to say there is no buyer at Prokhorov’s asking price of $1.7 billion. If Prokhorov drops his price to $1.2 billion, as some sports media reporters claim, there is still no buyer.

When Prokhorov bought the Nets – his stake is 80% — he told Bloomberg: “There is only one way to go – up. I like to find cheap assets with problems. It gives me power.” Today, if he’s obliged to accept a deal at the current industry valuation of $780 million for the team, Prokhorov must count that he has spent an additional amount of more than $600 million in player purchases, loss cover, debt service, and luxury taxes, ending up with no profit at all. If up was power in 2010, is down impotence today?
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by Editor - Friday, October 31st, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A top secret file of papers from Vnesheconombank (VEB) has leaked into the Moscow internet, disclosing a verbatim record of recent billion-dollar project reviews by the Russian state bank of last resort. The papers reveal that the multi-billion dollar Darwendale platinum mining project announced officialLy last month in Zimbabwe has been approved in “principle”, but no cash has been authorized. Not yet.
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by Editor - Wednesday, October 29th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The defeat by Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk of President Petro Poroshenko in the party voting at Sunday’s Ukrainian parliamentary election reveals a shift of voter sentiment no pollster predicted beforehand – neither the independent Ukrainian polling organizations in Kiev, nor the US Government-funded surveys.

On the other hand, the independent Ukrainian pollsters believe the election outcome will reinforce the anti-Russian, war party in the new Verkhovna Rada, despite the failure of the Svoboda (“Freedom”) and Pravy Sektor (“Right Sector”) organizations to cross the 5% threshold for party representation. Their failure, along with poor support for Yulia Tymoshenko and Oleg Lyashko, had been evident in the pre-election polling. How Yatseniuk managed to capture both war party votes in the western regions, and peace party supporters of Poroshenko in the centre and east is unclear.

This outcome was unforeseen, according to Nikolai Churilov of the Kiev-based Centre for Social and Marketing Research (SOCIS). He believes Yatseniuk was able to steal the war programme of the extreme right.
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by Editor - Wednesday, October 29th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

It is easier to know what’s inside a McDonald’s hamburger than inside the corporation’s financial accounts. That’s because the type font on the internet version of the corporation’s financial reports is so small, a magnifying-glass is required at the computer screen to decipher the text; even then computer programming by McDonald’s prevents copying the text. But a magnifying-glass cannot uncover the current financial condition of McDonald’s in Russia. Those numbers are entirely hidden, and McDonald’s spokesmen refuse to say what the company’s Russian sales revenues are, and how fast they are falling.
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by Editor - Tuesday, October 28th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The outcome of Sunday’s Ukrainian parliamentary election is likely to be a majority of deputies in favour of war in the east, and against Russia. This is because the Ukrainian economy is ruined, so for the foreseeable future, war draws US (IMF, World Bank) and European Union cash stipends which are a better-paying option than peace.
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by Editor - Friday, October 24th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The world’s most mysterious, and expensive, hole in the ground has been ceremonially opened by the Russian Foreign and Trade Ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Denis Manturov. At least that’s what they say they did a month ago in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe (lead image, centre), also presided.

The hole to be dug is to cost the Russian state budget and banking system at least $600 million, rising to $3 billion in three years; and then $4.8 billion by 2024 when mine, ore-processing plant and refinery are fully operational. That’s according to the Zimbabwe press announcements. They have also disclosed the list of Russian and Zimbabwean partners in the deal. Calling themselves Afromet, the Russians are Vitaly Mashitsky (lead image, left), Sergei Chemezov (right), and Vnesheconombank (VEB) represented by Alexander Ivanov, son of the presidential chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov. The Zimbabweans are calling themselves Pen East Investments. Together, they have picked the name Great Dyke Investments.

There’s a catch: no Russian involved in what is billed as the Darwendale platinum project wants to admit what he is doing; what protection from loss has been installed by the Kremlin for the money; and why a new platinum mine in east Africa can be a profitable way of spending Russian state money when the country’s platinum miners, Norilsk Nickel and Russian Platinum, say they wouldn’t touch the project with a barge-pole.
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by Editor - Thursday, October 23rd, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Voter polling by the US Agency for Intrnational Development in Ukraine reveals that if the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk fail to cast votes, the outcome will be a hung parliament. President Petro Poroshenko’s (lead image, left) bloc, according to the US- funded polls taken in September, will lead the voting, but his candidates are unlikely to gather more than 32% of the vote nationwide. That’s far ahead of his opponents, but when the most anti-Russian of them are added up, together they may draw about 30% of the vote.
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by Editor - Wednesday, October 22nd, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

United Company Rusal, the Russian aluminium monopoly, has announced it has won a judgement of the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) confirming its shareholding control of the Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria (Alscon), the only aluminium producer in the west African state. The LCIA, Rusal claims, has defeated the Nigerian Government’s challenge to the legality of the privatization of the plant in Rusal’s favour in 2004, and Rusal’s subsequent purchase of Alscon shares in 2006.
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by Editor - Sunday, October 19th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

“The genius of you Americans is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves.” That was Gamal Abdel Nasser addressing a CIA man he knew well, who’d been involved in a series of plots to assassinate Nasser, all hapless.

The year was 1957; that’s 57 years ago. If Nasser lived long enough to come across the Clinton family (lead image, rear left), President Barack Obama (front right), Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (rear right), Nasser was smart enough to have modified his observation to acknowledge that the genius of Americans is that they make clear-cut stupid moves, too.
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by Editor - Thursday, October 16th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A Washington think-tank, funded by the US Government, has discovered that at least half of all Ukrainians think that not enough force has been used to put down the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Even more Ukrainians express confidence in the military – 66% in the pro-Kiev volunteer battalions, and 76% in the regular Ukrainian forces. At the same time, the poll reveals that 73% of the Ukrainians believe the country is now worse off than it was six months ago, before Petro Poroshenko was elected president. If the opinions of those living in the Donbass aren’t counted, the percentage of pessimists is still 69%.
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by Editor - Wednesday, October 15th, 2014
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