By John Helmer, Moscow

Ksenia Yudaeva, the first deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) in charge of Russia’s reserves and the foreign exchange rate, was sacked on January 14. A notice appeared on the Tass wire in the evening of the Old New Year’s holiday, quoting Governor Elvira Nabiullina (above). She defended herself and Yudaeva. “I want to emphasize especially that we keep both strategic and tactical reference points in the monetary policy; the ideology of the monetary policy will maintain continuity with how we worked in 2013 and 2014.” Yudaeva, claimed Nabiullina, was keeping her title and her seat on the CBR board as “one of the best economists in the country.”

The action was disclosed the next day when Yudaeva’s replacement, Dmitry Tulin, a veteran central banker who has served twice before, was officially announced. The text of the CBR release didn’t mention Yudaeva. It said: “Dmitry V. Tulin has been appointed as a First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia from 21 January 2015. Dmitry V. Tulin will take up monetary policy issues.”

The Kremlin’s economic policy advisor, Andrei Belousov, had let the cat out of the bag before the Tass notice appeared, telling the press at a Moscow economic policy forum that Tulin’s appointment to run monetary policy “wasn’t a chance appointment”. He intimated that Yudaeva wasn’t up to her job because “the central bank now faces new challenges, and the tasks are more complex than during the previous period.” He meant Nabiullina too; but since Tulin is capable of running the show without demanding Nabiullina’s head, er title, she has hung on to it.

A spokesman for the Central Bank said this morning she doesn’t believe that in the recent history of the Central Bank, any governor has been dismissed for incompetence.
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by Editor - Monday, January 19th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The case for foreign investment in Ukraine is to be made by a specialist in sado-masochism, cosmetic surgery, and undress. Jaanika Merilo (above), 35, a member of the Estonian parliament of Ukrainian origin with US and UK training, was appointed the government advisor on foreign investment in Kiev on January 5. She will report to Aivaras Abromavičius, a Lithuanian and Ukraine’s Minister of Economic Development and Trade since December. In a press campaign this month which Merilo has authorized, she likens herself to the Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie.
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by Editor - Sunday, January 18th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The response of President Vladimir Putin to this month’s killings in Paris was immediate and unequivocal; so too Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (image, left). But on receiving French President Francois Hollande’s invitation to participate in the head of state, head of government demonstration in Paris on January 11. Putin declined, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (right) was not sent in his place. The substitution of Lavrov has not been noticed or explained in the Russian media.

The Russian response to the Charlie Hebdo demonstration wasn’t as absent the US government’s. No high US official participated in Sunday’s demonstration: Eric Holder, the US Attorney-General, was in Paris on the day, but not on the street. The only US representation there was the newly appointed US Ambassador to France, Jane Hartley, a money-raiser for President Barack Obama’s election campaigns.
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by Editor - Friday, January 16th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

President Vladimir Putin’s summons to the oligarchs for dinner on December 18 turned out to be a teddy bears’ picnic. And why not – they got all they came for, and more. The country outside got decidedly less, but for the time being how little is a state secret.
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by Editor - Tuesday, December 23rd, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

MiningMaven of London is a leading source of analysis for the global mining, minerals and metals sector. For this week’s interview on what will happen next in the war against Russia, pocket your telephone, and toss your paper. Tune in here.
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by Editor - Sunday, December 21st, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A federal US court in Colorado has begun proceedings on charges that Natalie Jaresko (lead image, right), the US national who was appointed Finance Minister of Ukraine this month, lied to the US State Department and violated US passport laws, after she misled a Ukrainian court in September into issuing a judgement it lacked the legal authority and the evidence to make.

Documents presented to the US court on November 21 also accuse the US Embassy in Kiev of being improperly influenced or misled into accepting the record of a Ukrainian court proceeding from which Ihor Figlus, Jaresko’s husband between 1989 and 2011, says he was excluded unlawfully. Figlus is a US citizen of Ukrainian extraction now living in a suburb of Denver. He is alleging in US District Court that Jaresko has tried to persuade the State Department to issue a US passport to the 10-year old daughter of their marriage with a ruling from a Kiev judge who believed the child was a Ukrainian citizen, not an American. Jaresko, according to Figlus, has manipulated the State Department with “rulings obtained in a foreign country whose judicial system is widely recognized by the Government of the United States as being deficient and corrupt.”

According to a Ukrainian legal specialist cited in the US court file, Jaresko “deceived the [Ukrainian] court” by preventing Figlus from participating in the proceedings, and then getting the court to rule on the child and violating Ukrainian law “which it could not apply in this matter.” Figlus has asked the Colorado court to order the State Department not to issue the passport.
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by Editor - Thursday, December 18th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Soviet-era officials had a peculiar standard of professional morality and ministerial responsibility, as this is known in the political democracies. Make a colossal mistake, the red directors used to say — take the blame on yourself. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev was the last Russian official of rank to do so. The anniversary of his death on August 24, 1991, is observed here.

The last head of Gosbank and twice the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), Victor Gerashchenko, is now 76 years old, and in his second retirement. He was driven into the first following the rouble crash of 1994, under the attack of US Government economic advisors, Jeffrey Sachs and David Lipton. They called him “the worst central banker in the world”. Gerashchenko was returned to the CBR after the 1998 crash and the appointment of Yevgeny Primakov as prime minister. Primakov was criticized by US Government officials as a proto-communist and a KGB spy. He was removed from office after eight months, when he prepared to take Russia into the war for Yugoslavia, on the Serbian side. Gerashchenko lasted until 2002.

Recently, Primakov has been called back to the Kremlin to assist President Vladimir Putin restate Russian foreign policy and security strategy. Gerashchenko remains on the outer, his return to advise Putin opposed, among others, by the current CBR Governor, Elvira Nabiullina, who is 25 years his junior. Following the crisis at the Central Bank on Monday and Tuesday, Gerashchenko was asked by an interviewer what advice he would give Nabiullina: “If I were in her position, I would ask for a gun, and shoot myself.”
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by Editor - Wednesday, December 17th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Once upon a time when the US Government used to plot the overthrow of allied European governments, Ronald Reagan was President, and George Shultz his Secretary of State. On March 25, 1986, Shultz arrived in Athens, intent on delivering an ultimatum for the Greek Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou; Shultz thought he would be a pushover. Either Papandreou would agree to accept an American scheme Shultz aimed to spell out – and humiliate Papandreou in front of his electorate. Or else the US would find a more direct way of removing him. It greatly amused Papandreou to know that Shultz had the Marine Corps insignia tattooed on his buttocks. He could be obliged sit on the vulgarity, Papandreou calculated — but not on Papandreou, and not on Greece. And so it turned out.

Tattoos, the seen and the unseen ones, flash powerful messages like that – even if their wearers don’t quite intend them the way they are interpreted. So what tattoos are worn by Elvira Nabiullina (left) and Ksenia Yudaeva (right), the two officials in charge of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) this week as they try to stop the run on the rouble and on the state reserves.
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by Editor - Tuesday, December 16th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Multi-billion dollar lending to Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank has stopped amid growing doubts among country board directors at the two international organizations that the Ukrainian Government can meet repayment commitments and loan covenants for 2015, or deliver on reform promises and budget financing targets tabled in Kiev this week.

For the first time since the change of government in Ukraine last February led to civil war in the east of the country, European bankers and multilateral fund sources acknowledge that Kiev is now likely to default on its international debts, and will seek a reorganization of its bond debt. This will hit Franklin Templeton, the US investment fund which has accumulated up to $9 billion in Ukrainian bonds on a wager to make a $4 billion profit – if the US Government guarantees full and timely repayment.
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by Editor - Monday, December 15th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The report of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on CIA torture is long on details, very short on Russia. For the full report, click.

There are just five references to Russia; all are footnotes to intelligence reports produced by several US government agencies for review by them all. Three footnotes refer to the notorious bomb attacks on apartment buildings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, when 293 people were killed; 651 injured. There is one footnote referring to unidentified Russians offering Arabs anti-aircraft missiles, and one on Russian roulette.
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by Editor - Thursday, December 11th, 2014
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