By John Helmer, Moscow

The oligarchs of Ukraine, who control the eastern regions’ principal assets, employment, tax base, and income, are at risk of being politically and financially squeezed to death. Unless they can quickly become Maoists — at least according to Mao Zedong’s Red Book saying: 枪杆子里面出政权 (“Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”)

In short, the oligarchs must take power from barrels of guns they disclaimed having at their disposal until now. The first of the new Ukro-Maoists has been Igor Kolomoisky (left), acting governor of Dniepropetrovsk region since March 2. The second, according to his announcement of May 10, is Rinat Akhmetov (right).
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, May 14th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The latest but one in the US Navy deployments to the Black Sea ended on Monday when the frigate, USS Taylor, sailed south through the Bosphorus Straits. Three days before on May 9 the cruiser, USS Vella Gulf, had been reported as due to steam north through the straits and into the Black Sea. According to the US Navy spokesman in Washington on May 13, it is now under way in the eastern Mediterranean, destination undisclosed.

For its return voyage to the Mediterranean the Taylor had stopped at the Georgian port of Batumi, and was refuelled there. According to the bunker supplier, Marine Supply & Service, “generally, physical bunker supply by tankers is not available in Georgian ports since beginning of 2013. Vessels arriving to Georgian ports are supplied with MGO (Marine Gasoil) by tank trucks, while IFO (Fuel oil) delivery still does not exist.”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, May 13th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The disclosure that Severstal is planning to sell its remaining two US steelmills has taken the Russian steel industry by surprise, triggering speculation the Kremlin has asked for the move as part of the ongoing conflict between the US and Russia in Ukraine.

For the time being, Severstal’s owner and chief executive Alexei Mordashov is making no official statement. Assessments in Moscow are divided over whether Mordashov has discussed the US asset sale plan with President Vladimir Putin as part of Russia’s reaction to the threat of US sanctions against the energy and metals sectors of the Russian economy. Russian steel industry sources believe Mordashov has authorized the press leak to advertise his asset sale in an attempt to lift the price.
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by John Helmer - Monday, May 12th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

If the presidential election goes ahead on May 25, half the voters of eastern Ukraine will not vote. Of the half who do, half will vote for the frontrunner and US-backed candidate, Petro Poroshenko. The other half will divide between three or four candidates, including the Communist Party’s Petro Simonenko, the former Kharkov governor Mikhail Dobkin, and the wealthy banker Sergei Tigipko. Among the half who don’t like the choice of candidates and don’t want to vote at all, less than half of them support the building takeovers and other semi-military displays of resistance to Kiev.

For eastern Ukraine, this is an outcome of no peace, no war. Except for the fighters on either side of the barricades, it’s also an outcome of no work, no money.
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by John Helmer - Friday, May 9th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

When Alexander Shokhin was a junior official in the international economic department of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1980s, it was plain he was short-sighted. That was because of the glasses he wore – the old Soviet type, super-thick. He’s come a long way since then, and so has sight-correction technology. When Shokhin met President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on February 14, his eyewear was much improved. His short-sightedness wasn’t.

Now president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RUIE), the principal business lobby in Moscow, Shokhin tried telling Putin his clients would agree to paying more Russian tax on their corporate, and maybe personal incomes, if Putin agreed to let them keep legal title of their assets abroad, under the jurisdiction of foreign courts, not Russian. Putin rejected the offer. It was one week before the Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich was ousted from office in Kiev, and the international position of Russian capital was to be exposed to unprecedented restrictions and risks – from a US Government attack on offshorization, not from the Kremlin’s.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, May 7th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the wake of the lethal Odessa fire on May 2, President Vladimir Putin and Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed by telephone on Sunday afternoon “to take effective measures, including through the OSCE in the first place, aimed at easing tensions in Ukraine. In this connection, Swiss Federal President and OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Didier Burkhalter will arrive in Moscow on May 7.”

This amounts to an invitation for the Swiss to exercise their longstanding neutrality in European conflicts to keep the warring sides apart in eastern and southern Ukraine; prevent the violence; and create the conditions in which a durable settlement between the Ukrainian regions may be negotiated on a new constitutional basis. In short, an international police force.
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by John Helmer - Monday, May 5th, 2014
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, April 30th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Vladimir Lenin was one day asked about the ethics of a party member who was marrying an heiress. The party wasn’t a “finishing school”, Lenin said, but the money would come in handy, no matter how the lady in question, or her parents, acquired it. “A scoundrel,” Lenin recommended, “may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”

This wasn’t the same thing as the adaptations attributed later to more than one US President regarding more than one foreign political leader. “He may be a sonofabitch (bastard, crook),” each of the presidents is reported to have said, “but he’s our sonofabitch (ditto).”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, April 29th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Diamonds are a bit like champagne: even in the worst of times, demand can grow among consumers, and for producers, sales revenues and profits too.

Good news isn’t usually the honey which attracts this particular bear; and Alrosa has been producing plenty of it. Released early this month, the company’s financial report for 2013 and operational report for the first quarter of 2014 show that production of rough stones is up, with higher grades for each tonne of ore and higher volumes of ore out of the company’s newest mines. Rough diamond prices are rising, so sales revenues grew at 11% last year, and are forecast to accelerate to 16% this year. Compared to its major global rivals, Alrosa has been able to maintain its output at the minehead, while the others – De Beers, Rio Tinto — have retreated, and BHP Billiton has left the business altogether.
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by John Helmer - Monday, April 28th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Eastern Ukrainians are convinced that the Kremlin will serve their interests best in the current tussle over constitutional rights, law and order, if President Vladimir Putin keeps Russian forces on the Russian side of the frontier. This view isn’t changing as partition of the country hardens, and violence in the east and south becomes worse.

The interpretation a US Government-funded polling operation draws from this is quite different from the conclusions the Ukrainians themselves are drawing. That’s because there are questions the US poll didn’t ask, and Ukrainian pollsters did. Publication of the US Government polling also reveals there were Ukrainian answers in March which Washington has omitted to report in April.
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by John Helmer - Friday, April 25th, 2014
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