By John Helmer, Moscow

In the New York and London markets brokers and bankers explain that they are being discreetly called by US Treasury officials with this message: buying Russian equity or debt paper is legal, but in the event there is a new round of sanctions, it will be illegal to re-sell them, so there can be no profit in Russian assets. The market is calling this campaign “stealth sanctions”. It is an attack on the international market for Russian corporations, and on the international currency and security clearance systems on which the market depends.

According to the highest UK and European courts — reported here on March 25 — the type of formal sanctions which the US and the EU have already introduced are likely to be found illegal, if they are challenged in court. Stealth sanctions are more difficult to substantiate in court -– and also financially much more damaging. Until now, there has been no Russian retaliation for the sanctions, and no litigation.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 20th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Putting money where the mouth is, the value of Russian artworks has reached a record high this month at auctions of Christie’s, Sotheby’s and MacDougall’s. Bad mouthing by the US State Department daily briefer is cheaper, as the US Government endorses Ukrainian government hate speech in referring to Russians in general as “subhuman”, and the president in particular as a “dickhead”. But for the heads of the Russian art departments at Christie’s and Sotheby’s, neither US sanctions nor the Russophobia of the London press have made any impact on cultural sentiment.

If anything, Russian art buyers are bidding against each other to recover and return to Russia works which have been on the walls of American and European collectors who acquired them before the revolution, or in the fire sales just after. Not exactly for patriotic reasons, Russian art buyers are doing this because they are confident the London market is securing new asset value, ensuring that even in the short run, Russian art will enjoy a lucrative resale price.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, June 19th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Two months after South Africa’s (SA) President Jacob Zuma appeared to drop Russia in favour of a Chinese-American combination for the country’s $50 billion nuclear reactor programme, the head of the SA National Nuclear Regulator, Bismark Tyobeka, appeared in Moscow last week to be favouring the Russian bid over the competition.

Tyobeka, who was attending a nuclear industry convention, AtomExpo-2014, was reported in the Russian press as saying that now that South Africa’s May 7 parliamentary elections are out of the way, Zuma intends to announce his choice for the first two reactors from among the competing bids of China, Russia, South Korea, and France. Tyobeka reportedly was negative towards the Chinese bid, which is coordinated with Westinghouse of the US. “All these countries also have a chance to become the contractor, but the main thing is whether they have sufficient experience of building nuclear power plants abroad. In that sense Russia has the best experience, and its chances [for the procurement award] are very high.”
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 18th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Victor Boyarkin, the former lieutenant-colonel of Russian military intelligence and special operations chief for United Company Rusal, returned to the company on Monday after an absence of fifteen months. In Conakry, the capital of Guinea, his arrival is anticipated shortly for a fresh attempt by Oleg Deripaska, Rusal’s chief executive, to relieve new pressure on Rusal to reopen the Friguia (Fria) alumina refinery and bauxite mine, and spend several hundred million dollars committed earlier to investment in Guinea.

The Guinean President, Alpha Conde (image, right foreground), has started to prepare his presidential election campaign for the poll, which is due in less than a year’s time. In Friguia, where Rusal is the principal source of employment, the alumina refinery has been closed since 2012, and according to local sources, the city is “dead. People are starving, and only a heavy military presence can keep things quiet. Conde has nothing to show for his presidency, and unless he can persuade Rusal to reopen the refinery, he must persuade the Russians to make a large compensation to help the city.”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 17th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The holes in Emmental cheese are so characteristic of the Swiss brand, their diameters are officially fixed by the US Food and Drug Administration. The reason for the holes is that in fabrication of the cheese, the addition of the Propionibacterium shermani causes the release of carbon dioxide. When the wheels of emmental are broken, the bubbles burst, leaving behind the holes. The Swiss call it the jolly bacterium (P. freudenreichii).

Didier Burkhalter, President of Switzerland, and also Chairperson-in-Office (CiO) of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), hasn’t been feeling so freudenreich lately with these two titles, whose tenures run out, both of them, on December 31.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 16th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Backstage at the Theatre du Chatelet on May 9, 1909, the curtain had come down on Vatslav Nijinsky’s performance of the Polovtsian Dances, an adaptation to Alexander Borodin’s music of the Tatar warrior dance. The Tatars flaunt their prowess, and their alluring slave girls, before their captive, the defeated Prince Igor. He’s in a low-libido Slavic mood, dismissing the Khan’s offer of his choice of the girls, or boys. The last words the chorus sings to Igor are: “There is more freedom for you there, song…And so, fly away!”

Nijinsky was asked by a visitor if it was difficult to stay in the air during his stage jumps. “No, no. Not difficult,” he answered. “You just have to go up and then pause a little up there.”

by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 11th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The International Monetary Fund’s senior officials have known that Stepan Kubiv, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, was removed six years ago for his involvement in a massive bank loss and loan diversion, when Kubiv was in charge of Kredobank, a west Ukrainian bank owned by PKO Bank Polski, the leading bank of Poland. The affair cost Bank Polski at least $350 million in 2008 and 2009. Another $144 million was provided by Bank Polski to save Kredobank from insolvency. At the time, Kubiv’s management performance led to his replacement by the chief executive of Bank Polski, Jerzy Pruski. The bank scandal was discussed officially, Bank Polski has reported, with the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and with the Central Bank of Poland.

The Kubiv dossier resurfaced in Warsaw after February 24, when Kubiv was named by the new Ukrainian Government to head the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU). In that role, Kubiv has been identified by the head of the IMF Ukraine Mission, Nikolay Gueorguiev, as the key Ukrainian official, under President Petro Poroshenko, who will decide what audits will be conducted of Ukraine’s commercial banks, and how much IMF money will be requested to bail them out.
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 9th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Last year Russia’s six major steelmakers cut 33,500 jobs from their payrolls, because, they explain, they are struggling to reduce losses and cut bank debt. That amounted to a loss of almost one in ten jobs in the Russian steel sector. At the end of 2013, the headcount of steelworkers was 355,900, down 9.4% from 2012.

Government officials and sector analysts acknowledge that five years ago during the collapse in steel trade in the last months of 2008 and first half of 2009, such a job cull would have been impossible because the Kremlin warned the mill proprietors against mass layoffs. Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK) announced it was reducing its steel output by 15% in October 2009 after earlier claiming the cutback would be 25%. Alexander Mastruev, head of personnel at MMK, said at the time: “It is not necessary to dramatise the situation, and to panic.” MMK was considering a furlough of employees, not dismissal and job cuts, he added. At Mechel, it was claimed at the time there was no plan to review production plans “for now” but the length of the working day might be cut. According to Mechel, “we are making all effort to save all working places and our employees.”
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by John Helmer - Monday, June 9th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is preparing to release Privatbank, the largest commercial bank in Ukraine, from independent tests of its solvency and capital adequacy, and allow a bailout of the bank with Ukrainian public funds, backed by the IMF. The Ukraine mission of the IMF has also revealed this week that it is allowing Igor Kolomoisky (image above), the control shareholder of Privatbank, to direct his own audit and stress test of the bank. This is despite independent evidence of large related-party lending in which the bank has been engaged; and despite judgements recently issued in the UK courts that Kolomoisky presents evidence that is “false or materially incorrect.”

The bank, headquartered in the Dniepropetrovsk region of eastern Ukraine, is rated E, according to Moody’s Investors Service, the worst of its ratings for “Ownership and Organizational Complexity, Key Man Risk [and] Insider and Related-Party Risks”. Kolomoisky has been the governor of the Dniepropetrovsk region since March 2, when he was appointed by the new government in Kiev. The record of his attacks on Russia, and on President Vladimir Putin, can be read here.
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by John Helmer - Friday, June 6th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Nudelman is the real name of Victoria Nuland, co-author of the February 21 coup d’etat in Kiev; and author of the four-letter expletive by which she disposed, almost, of Germany’s objections to the war against Russia which has followed.

In Yiddish, Nudelman is generally thought to refer to the culinary trade of making “lokshen”, the Yiddish form that’s closer to the Russian лапша than to the German “nudel”. It’s also related to the verb “nudyen”, which means to whine, nag, or push. The Yiddish “nudzh”, Polish “nudzik”, and the pseudo-Russian “nudnik” are related too. They mean a pestering bore — or a boring pesterer, depending on what she whines about. In the history of the Nudelman family, the name change was initiated by Shepsel Ber Nudelman (Sherwin B. Nuland, Victoria’s father), before he got to study at Yale University. Sherwin’s autobiography reveals his father, Victoria’s grandfather, to have been a “nudzh” with syphilitic symptoms. That autobiography also introduces the Nudelman habit of saying “Fuck you” at moments of disagreement with others. When Sherwin reports saying it on page 8 of his life, “my sea of troubles had receded”. When his daughter said it this past February, the sea of troubles became a tsunami. That is, if you are Ukrainian, Russian, European.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 3rd, 2014
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