By John Helmer, Moscow

In the Russian system, oligarchs can pretend to be patriots, but noone believes it. Nor does anyone, least of all outgoing president Dmitry Medvedev, believe them to be committed to competitive business.

But if you sit in the Kremlin, trying to run the power vertical over the wall to the rest of the country, the oligarchs serve the purpose of doing what they are told. When the red telephone rings, the oligarchs can be made to click their heels, salute, and say Yessir! more swiftly than the directors of state-owned or nationalized concerns. At least that’s the theory. In practice, Russia’s governors don’t have enough time in the day to make all the required telephone-calls (if they knew what to say, and wanted to).
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 30th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Alrosa’s state-owned shares will not be privatized until 2017, if then, a Kremlin document reveals this week.

The document is a 35-page briefing paper compiled by the Ministry of Economic Development, and presented by the Minister, Elvira Nabiullina, to President Dmitry Medvedev on January 24. In a tabulation of the government’s latest privatization schedule, at page 11 of the brief, a 50.9% stake in Alrosa is identified as subject to sale by 2017. The ministry declined to respond to a request for clarification.
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by John Helmer - Friday, January 27th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The future for Russian goldmining companies this year is bleak — even if the price of gold goes up.

The major Russian goldminers are all expected to fail to reach their mine output targets, so they will be able to sell less gold at what are expected to be higher costs. But there’s worse. In order to qualify for listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), Polyus Gold — the property at present of Mikhail Prokhorov and Suleiman Kerimov and Russia’s leading goldminer — will have to sell their shares. This isn’t the first occasion in which those two have felled the share price by signalling their desire to sell.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, January 25th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Never before has the American electorate been given the opportunity to vote for a president whose first name gives away everything he stands for. And I’m not talking about Honest Abe — Abe meant nothing.

In the history of Newts the climax was first reached in 1934 by Augustus Fink-Nottle (left), one of England’s most distinguished researchers on the minor amphibian species, the Salamandridae (centre). These creatures distinguish themselves by a skin that is not only tough for a predator to bite into, but they secrete a toxin which in some species is strong enough to kill a man.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The first Dance with Bears appeared in the Russia Journal, edited by Ajay Goyal, a decade ago. It began as a short commentary appearing once or twice a week. The title came from Astolphe de Custine, the greatest observer of Russia ever to be obliged to conceal what he was writing inside his hat, as the Russians he was writing about chased him across the frontier. That circumstance made for pithy style, sharp focus.

In 1839 de Custine had written: “Such ill-bred and yet well-informed, well-dressed, clever, and self-confident Russians are trained bears, the sight of which inclines me to regret the wild ones: they have not yet become polished men, and they are already spoiled savages.” His book drew denunciations in the Russian press at the time, and was banned in Russian until 1996.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In Abakan at this time of year the sun doesn’t rise until 10 in the morning, and by 5 it’s too dark to see much. It’s always been this way in the days which follow Kreshenskiy Moroz (the Feast of the Epiphany, old calendar).

This week in the capital of the central Siberian region of Khakassia, the forecast is for a low of -37 C. and a high of – 14 C. The windchill is -25 C. On January 31, 2005, the mean temperature during the day was -28 C, reaching -34 C after the sun went down at 5:33 pm.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 24th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The state-owned maritime conglomerate, United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC), will acquire the Vyborg Shipyard, on the Gulf of Finland near St. Petersburg, the USC spokesman Alexei Kravchenko confirmed to Fairplay in Moscow on Friday.
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 23rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Russian steel companies have been ordered by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin to clean up their emissions, and pay for it out of their owners’ profit stream and dividends. If they agree, he is promising to provide tax and other offsets for their balance-sheets. Is he kidding?

According to the press reports, Sechin has ordered the government agencies supervising the steel sector, including the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), the Federal Environment Protection Agency (Rosprirodnadzor), and the Federal Agency for Ecological, Technical and Nuclear Supervision (Rostekhnadzor), to devise new regulations to require the steelmakers to commit to a minimum level of capital expenditure for modernization of their production; to fund part of that out of their profits; and to receive in return tax and loan concessions. Among the objectives Sechin’s instruction reportedly cites is “reducing the environmental impact and increase competitiveness of Russian products.”
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by John Helmer - Monday, January 23rd, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

“Russia’s federal security service, the successor to the KGB, has launched a cold-war style attack on non-governmental organisations and human rights groups, linking them with alleged espionage by British diplomats in Moscow.The accusations against the British diplomats come within weeks of Russia assuming the presidency of G8 from Britain and just days before a meeting of finance ministers in Moscow which will be attended by Gordon Brown, the UK chancellor…

The FSB on Monday confirmed claims made in a state television programme that it had uncovered a James Bond-style spying operation involving four British diplomats using a transmitter hidden in a fake rock on a Moscow street to gather information.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, January 19th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In the final summing-up of Boris Berezovsky’s case for several billion dollars in stolen goods against Roman Abramovich, the name of Vladimir Putin turns up just four times.

The four mentions by Berezovsky’s counsel, Laurence Rabinowitz, during his two-day court presentation on January 17 and 18, are more noteworthy for what they aren’t.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, January 19th, 2012
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