by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Since the lethal Sevastopol beach attack on June 23 triggered open criticism of President Vladimir Putin’s military inhibitions,  there has been a Russian counter to the operation of US Air Force (USAF) drones which direct the missile strikes from international airspace over the Black Sea.  

The June 23 missile salvo used US-made and US-crewed ATACMS missiles.

The US Secretary of Defense, General Lloyd Austin, then spoke by telephone on June 25 with his Russian counterpart, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov – their first conversation since Belousov replaced Sergei Shoigu in May. In the Pentagon briefing, nothing was admitted except that it had been the Pentagon which initiated the call, not the Russian side.  

What happened next was that the Defense Ministry announced Belousov had noted “the increased intensity of flights of strategic unmanned aerial vehicles of the United States over the Black Sea” and “instructed the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation to take measures of prompt response to provocations”. The Russian Air Force began to attack the US Air Force Global Hawk ((Northrop Grumman RQ-4B) drones in a new way (lead image, right).

Their operation was transferred from Sigonella in Italy to the Kogălniceanu Air Base near Constanta in Romania. The electronic warfare operation to guide Ukrainian missile attacks on Crimea was transferred from drones to manned aircraft, and from the US Air Force (USAF) to the Royal Air Force (RAF). British-made Storm Shadow missiles, fired by Ukrainian aircraft, then replaced the ATACMS, and new attacks begun on Sevastopol.

The Russian reaction has been to destroy the Ukrainian airfields from which these launches began and the aircraft which fired them.  On July 2, the Russian Defense Ministry reported, “as a result of a group strike with precision weapons on an airfield, five Su-27 aircraft of the enemy air force were destroyed and two were damaged. Two more Ukrainian aircraft, MiG-29 and Su-27,  were shot down by Russian air defence.”  The airfield targeted was Mirgorod, near Poltava in the northeast. 

Air evacuation of US ground casualties from the Nikolaev area of the ATACMS launches has been reported by Russian military bloggers through the Polish border hub of Rzeszów.

This is how the war between the US, UK and Russia is being fought.  The two leading military bloggers, Boris Rozhin of Colonel Cassad and Mikhail Zvinchuk of Rybar, remain skeptical. “There is every awareness [of the Black Sea drone problem] in the decision-making centers. But after all the crossings of the red lines and despite the threatening statements to shoot down the American RQ-4, no one has done so.”  

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by Editor - Tuesday, July 2nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

If you think that Popeye beat Bluto because he ate spinach, this US presidential cartoon, I mean  debate, was for you.

That President Joseph Biden, handicapped as he was by Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy body dementia, won the 90-minute television fight with Donald Trump seems so obvious to Russians, they express surprise at  the near-unanimity in the US that the opposite was the outcome.  

While the Russian state propaganda organs are repeating the “Joe Must Go” line — the US-funded Russian opposition media also   — military and intelligence analysts in Moscow are concluding that Biden and Trump proved they are equally dangerous for Russia, but that Trump is now the candidate for much bigger wars in the Middle East and against China. Replacing Biden, Russian sources believe, is now an operation of the Zionist and Taiwan lobbies in Washington.

“The Democratic party elites started to think of ways to get Biden out of the way,” according to one Moscow source. “so sending him into a long debate, so early in the campaign, was exactly meant to achieve this – he will look bad but there is enough time to replace him.  Republicans have always been this racist but Trump says it more plainly.  Biden has always been a wolf in sheep’s clothing but he can no longer find new words to keep up the charade. What is there to see? America has never been weaker. The important thing to see here [Moscow] is the reluctance to drive American imperial power off the cliff.” 

“Despite Biden’s obvious handicap, I thought he won,” adds a second source. “Biden telling Trump ‘you have the morals of an alley cat’, won it as far as I’m concerned. He also called Trump out on the racism and fascism, something Trump had no answer for except to double down. Didn’t anyone notice Trump’s compulsive repetitiveness? He repeated the same lies and aspersions over and over again. He’s more lucid than Biden, but not by much. He’s an ageing, narcissistic, racist crook.”

The Russian sources also believe that support for Trump in Moscow is an oligarch operation with a similar fondness for Israel. That has been the line of Roman Abramovich since his abortive attempts to save himself from sanctions and defeat the Russian Army failed at the beginning of the Special Military Operation in March and April 2022.   

“I believe,” said one source, “ ‘Joe must go’ because he expressed some trepidation regarding Israel. He was set up — the guns were loaded and cocked before the debate even started.”

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by Editor - Saturday, June 29th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Buried in the small print and legalese of the new European Union (EU) sanctions announced on June 24 is the re-establishment of the old European and American empires’ operation of privateering. That’s piracy on the high seas licensed by the monarch or the head of state on condition that the proceeds are shared with court and state officials.

In short, state war for private profit — grand larceny by the Great Powers if they can get away with it.

To make sure of that, the EU has issued “Council Decision (CSFP) 2024/1738”  which allows the thieving to be done in secret. In Article 1 of Monday’s document, the EU authorizes “the release of certain frozen funds [Russian], after having determined that the transfer of such funds is: (a) between two natural or legal persons, entities or bodies that are not listed in the Annex to this Decision”. That’s the stealing.  

And here is the cover-up: Article 4a is amended to read that the operation: “shall be subject to professional secrecy and shall enjoy the protection afforded by the rules applicable to the Union institutions. That protection shall apply to the proposals from the High Representative for the amendment of this Decision and to any preparatory documents related to them.”

This is the EU summary version of the new sanctions package.  Note that it disguises the privateering provisions as “specific initiatives to protect EU operators from expropriation and to respond to other illegitimate actions of the Russian state, including the theft of intellectual property.”

An EU press release is also camouflage, describing the purpose of the new measures “to allow EU operators to claim compensation from damages caused by Russian companies due to sanctions implementation and expropriation. It also creates the instrument to draw up a list of company subject to a transaction ban for meddling with arbitration and court competence.”  

The reaction in Moscow will be a counterattack on EU corporate and individual assets within Russian reach. This is spelled out in a report by Kommersant, the Moscow business newspaper, published on Monday. Read the verbatim piece translated into English here.   There is no reporter byline; illustrations have been added.

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 25th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6) continues to celebrate itself as the master of deception operations, at least when it comes to fooling their own population and their US allies. Successful deception is the principal weapon London contributes in its special relationship with the US, since in money, men, weapons, and military technology it lags far behind.

Fooling the enemy, however, is not something Perfidious Albion is good at.

The last time the British succeeded was Operation Mincemeat in 1943 when the corpse of a Welsh tramp suicide, dressed up to look like a courier of secret military plans, was floated on to a Spanish beach for the purpose of fooling Adolf Hitler and the German High Command on when and where the Allies planned to launch their D-Day offensive in Europe. The operation appears to have succeeded in deceiving the Germans; that’s the version the British keep repeating.  

In 2018 the British tried again with a fresh deception operation, also with a corpse,  to convince themselves and the world that the Russian military, ordered by the Kremlin, had attacked on British soil with a nerve agent weapon, first targeting Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia; then as collateral damage a county policeman; and finally, after four months had elapsed,  a woman who had accidentally sprayed herself with the nerve agent which had been found abandoned in a dumpster, disguised as a perfume atomiser. The cause of death of Dawn Sturgess, the last and only fatal victim of the alleged Russian attack, is still being investigated in secret, ahead of a public inquiry due to commence in London in October.  

This is the Novichok deception operation, the first British success in the 81 years since Operation Mincemeat. Except that the new operation didn’t deceive the Russians like the old one had the Germans.  

Instead, it has become the justification for the British Government going to war against Russia for reasons which no vote of parliament, no media investigation, and no public opinion poll has disputed over six years. The deception of themselves has been the powerful result of the Skripal case.

Listen to Chris Cook of Gorilla Radio lead the discussion of how and why the Skripal case has been, and is still,  more persuasive politically and militarily than the case of Julian Assange. Unlike Sergei Skripal, Assange has survived years of British imprisonment; and unlike Yulia Skripal, he is now a free man.  As the broadcast was going to air, the news broke that Assange had been released from  Belmarsh prison in a plea bargain between the British, US and Australian governments.  

Also breaking news during the broadcast was the claim that the Russian Air Force had shot down a US Air Force drone off the Crimean shore in Black Sea airspace. There is no confirmation of the claim, which first surfaced in the Russian military blogs.   They have been calling for this strike in retaliation for the Sevastopol missile attack on Sunday. Read the lead to that story here.  

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by Editor - Monday, June 24th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The Ukrainian missile attacks on Sevastopol on Sunday afternoon – five US ATACMS missiles with cluster-bomb warheads – have drawn the most explicit reaction yet from Russia’s independent military bloggers, followed in four hours by an official communiqué from the Defense Ministry.  The Kremlin communiqué which followed the Defense Ministry an hour later as Sunday evening came on, was not the same.

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by Editor - Sunday, June 23rd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

A new lawyer appeared in a London court on Friday claiming to represent Sergei (lead image, left)  and Yulia Skripal. Jack Holborn, a barrister specializing in what he calls human rights,  told Lord Anthony Hughes, who is conducting a public inquiry into the alleged Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess in 2018, that the Skripals should not be called to give evidence or testify in the case.  

Holborn claimed the Skripals are fearful for their security. “No security measures are perfect”, he said.  

Holborn has not been in contact with the Skripals, however. He refuses to answer questions put to him on what visual contact or other communications he has had with either Sergei or Yulia Skripal.

Instead, he was told what to say at the hearing by the law firm of Kingsley Napley which the British government is paying to show that the Skripals are participating in the Novichok case.

The spokesman for Hughes and the inquiry was asked to explain Holborn’s presence in court for the first time on Friday. She was also asked what authority the Skripals had given Holborn to represent them. The spokesman answered: “Kingsley Napley has been designated as the recognised legal representative of the Skripals under r[ule] 6 of the Inquiry Rules 2006.  By rule 8, the recognised legal representative may appoint a team to  assist them and Kingsley Napley have accordingly instructed counsel to appear on their clients’ behalf.”

In other words, there has been no contact between the lawyers who say they represent the Skripals, and the Skripals themselves. The judge and government are refusing to give evidence that Sergei Skripal is alive,  and that Yulia Skripal is not in prison.

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by Editor - Saturday, June 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The balloon didn’t quite go up at Wednesday’s session of European Union (EU) officials in Brussels to decide on a new round of anti-Russian sanctions, the fourteenth package of the EU’s economic war. Stopping Russian helium exports, one of the items in the package, wasn’t the sticking point.*  

The Russian helium balloon is going up, nonetheless – but not in the direction the EU, US, and other NATO allies imagine.  What is happening instead, Russian industry sources reveal, is that the war conditions have accelerated Russian investment into a rapid expansion of the country’s helium production, ending Russia’s need for helium imports, advancing Russia ahead of the US as the world’s leading producer and exporter, and threatening US helium producers with the destruction of their price and profitability.  

At present, Russian plants produce between 4 and 5 million cubic litres of helium per year; the country needs to consume about 6 million cubic litres, and so it has been importing about 2 million litres a year. The plan for helium production in newly built plants in Amur, Irkutsk, Tatarstan, and Yakutia — sourced from gasfields in Amur and Yakutia with some of the richest helium concentrations in the world — is to generate about 75 million cubic litres annually. That’s  40% of the current world consumption of about 190 million cubic litres. With that much helium, Russia will top the US as the world’s leading producer; take the largest share of the global helium export market; and with exports to China dominate world supply for the foreseeable future.

When Europeans and Americans will want to buy balloons for their parties, fuel their medical scanning and respiration machines, save their naval divers from the bends, and drive their airships, they will have to beg the Russians and Chinese for the helium at the latter’s price. Their warfighting weapon will have been pricked.

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by Editor - Thursday, June 20th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The Russian military bloggers haven’t been as quick as the Kiev regime and NATO allies to dismiss President Vladimir Putin’s peace terms speech to the Foreign Ministry as propaganda. But they did.

According to Boris Rozhin, the editor-in-chief of the Colonel Cassad military blog, Putin’s speech on Friday morning, June 14,  “was not announced in advance”. The Foreign Ministry audience who assembled “learned about it half an hour in advance, no more.” There is telltale vagueness in the  Kremlin communiqué introducing “a meeting with the senior officials of the Russian Foreign Ministry.”  

In practical terms, Moscow’s leading independent military analyst concluded, the speech was a tactical feint and a strategic deception.

“[Putin’s terms] will obviously not be accepted by the West and their Ukrainian puppets,” wrote  Rozhin.  “Against the background of the ‘world summit’ [the Burgenstock, Switzerland, meeting on June 15-16] this will indicate that in fact the West is prolonging the war, so these statements [of Putin] are another torpedo in the summit. Russia is thus showing the countries of the Global South that it has offered a world that will be rejected by those who are broadcasting about ‘peaceful summits’…The war will continue. The goals of the SVO [Special Military Operation] will be achieved by military means.”

The distinction in the last line is between Kremlin political strategy and General Staff military strategy – this is a distinction which published Russian analyses of the president’s speech and the state propaganda organs avoid identifying. The semi-official Vzglyad quoted Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, as characterizing the reaction from the West as “of an unconstructive nature”.  No Russian official will say as little as this for the record.

Instead, Vzglyad has mobilized its official sources to patch over the differences between Kremlin strategy and General Staff strategy by emphasizing that Putin is following the latter. “According to [Putin], the West has received a specific condition – either Ukraine will be outside the NATO bloc, or there will be a bold and sharp onslaught that will leave no chance for the enemies. Putin is confident of victory not only over Ukraine, but also over the entire collective West. The proposal was made in order to recall this initiative after the defeat of Ukraine. But Western leaders did not understand Putin, and then they themselves will say that they want peace… But there will be no mercy, tougher conditions will be put forward.”  

In a second report from academics on the Kremlin-financed Valdai Club roster,  Vzglyad claims “the essence of the Russian president’s speech is that the European security system no longer exists and will not be based on the same principles.”  “In addition, the Russian president managed to change the agenda of the Swiss summit…the president’s initiative is capable of transforming the security structures not only of Eurasia, but also in the perspective of the entire planet. In addition, Russia already has really working international institutions in this space: the CIS, SCO, EAEU, CSTO, BRICS, the Union State of Russia and Belarus. All these tools have proven their reliability and suitability in modern conditions.”

The Kremlin’s American camp followers have repeated the semi-official line by scratching the difference between tactics and strategy, between feint and purpose.  “Notice he’s [Putin] not making a demand about Odessa,” said one. “So Odessa is still off the table…So this is a prelude to the next ramp-up in Russian military operations.”  

Russian skeptics,  as well as non-Russian military analysts,  point out that Putin has repeatedly refused to follow the General Staff’s advice, restricting their proposed military operations to an extent that there is open questioning about his reasons. One source says Putin’s June 14 exposition is “only half-right in blaming the Western ‘globalist liberal elites’ [Putin’s speech] for the current ‘extremely dangerous state of affairs’ [Putin’s speech].  Ultimately, the ideology of liberalism, inferiority complex, and corruption which dominate the oligarch-backed elite in Moscow has played a major role.”

This is a reference to the role Putin invited the oil and minerals oligarch Roman Abramovich to play in the negotiations of March-April 2022 in Istanbul; in the negotiations with the Ukrainian delegation, Abramovich was Putin’s personal delegate and he outranked the official Russian negotiators.    There was strong domestic military and political opposition to this at the time in Moscow; there remains suspicion of an attempt to repeat by Putin’s Kremlin staff, represented by Peskov, even now.

“He [Putin] cannot be so influenced still as to think the war against Russia via the Kiev regime will stop under the conditions he laid out, nor can he think there are any terms which the US and NATO can be trusted by the Russians to sign. That’s why the Russian Foreign Ministry tabled the terms of a non-aggression and security in Europe requiring the roll-back of NATO’s borders to 1997. That was in December 2021. To think anyone on the other side is trustworthy, or capable of agreement, after all Putin recounted of US aggression, lying, double-dealing,  and Ukrainian Nazism, is impossible.”

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by Editor - Sunday, June 16th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Wine, and the money to spend on drinking it, are growing at an unprecedented pace in Russia. For a country at war in Europe this has not happened in modern times, and probably not since the ancient Roman emperors and medieval English kings arranged for their city fountains to flow with wine in celebration of military victories and coronations.

The surge in wine consumption signals the growing confidence of Russian consumers in their future. A parallel surge in wine imports since April is also a signal that the Russian Finance Ministry aims to raise taxes on this good cheer.

In 2023, 320 million litres of still and fortified wine were imported to Russia, which was 4.4% more than in 2022, according to a study by the large Moscow importer, distributor, and retailer, the Luding group.   According to other market reports, by the end of last year the  largest supermarket groups had increased their imports of wine by 7% compared to the year before. The X5 group, for example, which operates the Pyaterochka and Perekrestok stores, reported an 18% annual increase; the Magnit chain was up 83%.

This year the rate of increase in wine imports has been accelerating.  Through April, the Russian Customs figures show a 20% rate of increase in the volume of wine imports compared to the first four months of 2023. The most noticeable surge was observed in April, when twice as much wine was imported as a year ago.

Part of the reason is that the Russian war economy is now generating significantly faster growth in consumer income than the rate of inflation. Adjusted for that, real wages grew 0.3% between March 2022 and March 2023. This is after a prolonged decline in real wages between 2013 and 2021.   In the first quarter of this year, January through March, real disposable income – a slightly different metric measured by the state statistics agency Rosstat — jumped 5.8% compared to the year before. This was a relative slowdown compared to the last quarter of 2023, when real disposable income was up 7% year on year.  Rosstat is reporting also that real wages grew by a record 13.3% in May 2023. The agency’s measurement reflected the jump in war-related civilian sector wages and in payments to military personnel. Pensions, by contrast, were shrinking slightly in real terms.

The government is now estimating the full-year 2023 rate of real income growth at 5.4%; in 2024 at 2.8%, and next year at 2.8%.  Consumer demand is predicted to rise in step.

Despite Russian casualties at the front already running ahead of the ten-year Soviet Afghanistan War,  the Russian war economy, and the impact of the NATO sanctions war, are paying a large domestic dividend – and not only at the wine shop.

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by Editor - Thursday, June 13th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

June 12 marks the anniversary of Boris Yeltsin’s election as President of Russia.

It is no moment for celebration.

The government which he led successfully over the attempted putsch of last August and through the disintegration of the Soviet Union now lacks credible authority in the Russian federation and among its people.

There is no agreement on a constitution to hold the federation together, or to divide the power granted by Russian votes for
president and parliament.

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 11th, 2024
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