By John Helmer, Moscow

If Ziyavudin Magomedov hadn’t persuaded a Moscow business newspaper to report yesterday that he is in negotiations with Rosneft, world’s largest publicly traded oil producer, the news that Vitol, world’s largest oil trader, has abandoned a 3-year old venture to build a new Rotterdam oil terminal with Magomedov would have been bad news indeed. Magomedov has a knack for exaggerated deal releases, though, and the Rotterdam press coverage of the latest episode makes this one look worse for Magomedov than if he had said nothing at all. Who in their right mind broadcasts that he has asked Igor Sechin, chief executive of Rosneft, for money until after Sechin has said yes.

In Magomedov’s case, an appeal to Sechin also means that not even the financier of Magomedov’s last resort, David Bonderman of US-based TPG Group, is willing to put up his dime.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 12th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to pork sausage. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our profitability.

If Europeans do that, it’s classical from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. If Russians do it, it’s trade war. Oleg Tyagnibok, the Ukrainian oppositionist whom the US Government is promoting into power in Kiev, hasn’t been asked yet what he thinks of the Russian ban on European pork imports. But he’s bound to blame the “Moscow-Jewish mafia” because he’s blamed them before, though not exactly for trying to enforce the kosher code.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 11th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland (right), was born in 1961. She is too young to have read Graham Greene’s book, The Quiet American, published in 1955 to explain why US attempts to liberate Vietnam by inventing a “Third Force” of locals would end in death and destruction for the Vietnamese; failure for the Americans. The US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt (left), born in 1963, is two years younger than Nuland, and that much more innocent of the meaning of The Quiet American.
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by John Helmer - Friday, February 7th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A reporter for the New York Times has scooped the global press in Sochi. Named David Herszenhorn, the newspaper’s specialist on the New York City borough of Queens, the reporter has uncovered a plot to kill a group of stray dogs – by poison darts causing suffocation — in front of the main venues of the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. The dog death plot, according to Herszenhorm, was intended to “undercut the image of a friendlier, welcoming Russia that President Vladimir V. Putin has sought to cultivate in recent months.”

Herszenhorn (image, centre) also reveals that a counter-plan to save Sochi from televised images of violent canine death is being financed by Oleg Deripaska (image, left), chief executive of United Company Rusal. “Mr Deripaska, an industrialist who largely made his fortune in aluminum, provided $15,000 to get the shelter started on land donated by the local government. He has also pledged about $50,000 a year for operations.”
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by John Helmer - Thursday, February 6th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A new Ukrainian opinion poll of voter intentions – measured across the country between January 17 and 26, and just released — explains why the Ukrainian opposition, the US, and the European Union (EU) have dropped their demand for the release from prison of Yulia Tymoshenko. For the background to that story, read yesterday’s report.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 5th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Not since the British started the Δεκεμβριανά in Greece in 1944, and not unless you count Na Trioblóidí in Northern Ireland until 1998, has the possibility of civil war in civilized Europe loomed so gravely. No wonder the mailbox is brimful of questions, for which there are no obvious answers.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 4th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A UK High Court ruling on Friday has struck a surprise blow against Ukrainian pipemaker Victor Pinchuk (image), as he fights to stave off bankruptcy claims from international Eurobond holders, international and Russian banks, and Ukrainian suppliers. The timing could not be worse for the Ukrainian, who has been paying Bill and Hillary Clinton, Tony Blair, and a group of European politicians to back him in the current Ukrainian political crisis.
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by John Helmer - Monday, February 3rd, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The South African Government has pulled back from the agreement it reached last November with Rosatom, the state nuclear industry corporation, to build nuclear reactors to supply South Africa’s future power needs. Officials at the South African Department of Energy refuse to say to what the Minister of Energy, Ben Martins, has decided. Off the record, sources in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Moscow claim the reason for dropping the $50 billion deal is that the government has revised its assessment of its future energy needs, and decided it doesn’t need the new reactors, at least not soon.

But that’s a nose-stretcher. The assessment leading to the change of mind in Pretoria was issued by the Department of Energy on November 21. For weeks beforehand its conclusions were well-known to the ministry, Minister Martins, and to the office of President Jacob Zuma (image above), when he approved the initialling of the Rosatom deal. The deal ceremony took place on November 26, five days after the Energy Ministry had issued its thumbs-down.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, January 30th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

When the last war with Germany was ending, the British intelligence services rounded up as many of their German counterparts as they could find, and interrogated them. They were taken by surprise, as a series of reports by Hugh Trevor-Roper, then a signals intelligence analyst, uncovered as early as 1944.* For the British, the surprise was that neither German military intelligence (Abwehr) nor the SS intelligence organization (Sicherheitsdienst) had the doctrine or the resources for strategic deception: that’s the capacity to mask from your opponent what your plans are, and thereby fool your target into positioning himself for defeat. By the standards of British deceit, as British historians and thriller writers have proclaimed ever since, the Germans were naïve – exposing a colossal Achilles heel to be exploited just because it was always possible to persuade them to put their Achilles foot into a trap.

Predictability and naivety aren’t recommended for war-fighting — nor just for Germans, and not just then. The British intelligence services’ reports on the Russian capacity for deception remain top secret. But what the British believed was once their own superiority in deception tactics, they have now dispensed with, or lost. So when it comes to waging the Anglo-American war against Russia, there’s been no disguise for the Achilles Heels on display in the war for Chechnya or in the Georgian War of August 2008 – both of them lost by the Anglo-American side.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 29th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska has never agreed to settle before judgement in international litigations against him, or against his management of United Company Rusal, unless Deripaska was certain his opponents held a winning hand. When Rusal announced last week that it has settled a London arbitration with Rusal shareholders, Victor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik, what had happened was a big loss which Rusal’s public shareholders failed to anticipate – with the case still to run against Deripaska personally. That’s the mirror part.

The smoke part has been the failure of market reporting in Moscow and elsewhere to notice the significance of Vekselberg’s and Blavatnik’s victory, and the compensation Deripaska has undertaken, along with Glencore. It was Glencore’s contract for trading Rusal’s aluminium, which was the cause of action that Rusal has now settled.
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by John Helmer - Friday, January 24th, 2014
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