By John Helmer, Moscow

In case you’ve been missing the action this summer: the Russian wheat harvest is proving to be so abundant, Moscow experts and grain traders are forecasting that exports will reach up to 23.5 million tonnes in the trading season which runs until June 30, next year.

Alexander Korbut, spokesman for the Russian Grain Union, representing the exporters, said the target of 23.5 million tonnes is “realistic, because Russia has plenty of grain, and it is absolutely necessary to export this volume to empty the storages. The market environment is also favourable.”
(more…)

by John Helmer - Sunday, September 11th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

The last time Russia’s leadership assembled to listen to a piece of classical music was seventy-five years ago. It was on January 26, 1936, that Josef Stalin and the entire Politburo were at the Bolshoi Theatre to hear Dmitry Shostakovich’s opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Stalin was seen not to like the atonal harmonies or the loudness of the percussion and brass lines; he also laughed at one of the erotic scenes.

Look carefully at the lower box on the left-side of the Bolshoi stage and on the right-side of the ground-floor buffet (before reconstruction), and you will have been able to spot the special doors through which Soviet leaders could come and go to the music with least distraction for the audience. It was through that passage that they exited when they didn’t like what they heard. How courteous of them, you might think in retrospect
(more…)

by John Helmer - Friday, September 9th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Victor Rashnikov, owner of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK), appears to have done it to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin one more time.

The latest financial report, issued last week by the company, reveals a whopping 93% plunge in net income – second quarter compared to first quarter — despite a 9% gain in sales revenues. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the company forecast for the third and fourth quarters suggests that Rashnikov is aiming to limit production and cut costs in Russia, and transfer his profit-taking to Turkey.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 8th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow
 

“Conversations with senior representatives of ALCOA indicate that SUAL was not Deripaska’s first or only choice for this merger (which is one possible reason why it has taken more than five years for the two parties to come together). Deripaska approached ALCOA in the first half of this year, but the talks broke down when the asset valuation gap could not be closed to Deripaska’s satisfaction.”

(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

The US State Department has been torturing Russian oligarchs into making admissions by seating them in the special chair devised by the Spanish Inquisition in September 1970.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Tuesday, September 6th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

This time it seems to be clear that Transneft, Russia state-owned oil pipeline company, has had quite enough of both the Bulgarians and the Turks, and has told them it won’t build its planned pipelines across the territory of either of them. This puts an end, a temporary end probably, to the three-cornered political games the governments have been playing for more than a year now.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Monday, September 5th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

If you are just back from the beach with your sachel of books dog-eared, riddled with beach sand, even read to the finish, you may have missed the latest in this year’s crop of thrillers with Russians for villains. Mark Mills’s House of the Hanged was released in July. The Independent newspaper of London, owned since March by ex-KGB man Alexander Lebedev, claims this is the author’s “best work in an already accomplished career.”

A few weeks earlier, Chris Morgan Jones’s Agent of Deceit had a paid-up state-owned Russian oligarch in the seat of villainy, with the fear of Imperial Russia Revived the touchstone of a plot that tied British journalists, London due diligence investigators, and MI6 on the same side (Good).
(more…)

by John Helmer - Sunday, September 4th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Nostradamus, the 16th century French sage, doesn’t get the credit he deserves for his recipe for the Black Plague. He recommended swift removal of infected corpses; fresh air; clean water; and drinking copious amounts of Vitamin C in rose-hip tea. He was also against the then customary practice of bleeding patients.

The beak in his outfit was filled with aromatic herbs for staunching the putrid air. But the mortality rate among plague doctors was high; most survived by running away from their patients. To keep them on the job, municipalities used to offer them four times the going rate for conventional doctors.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Sunday, September 4th, 2011
No Comments »

Dmitry Rybolovlev’s interest in acquiring US assets is well-known in part because he paid the highest price in American history for a house. Take the tour.

Compared to the asking price of $125 million and the transaction price of $95 million, Rybolovlev got a 24% discount. But the asset value of the house has done poorly compared to Rybolovlev’s Uralkali shares. The assessed value of the Miami property dropped about 40% in the twelve months since he bought it.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 1st, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska has reached an agreement with President Alpha Conde to end the claims of the Guinean Government against United Company Rusal, Guinean sources report from Conakry. The terms of settlement remain secret; some of them are expected to be announced publicly soon.
(more…)

by John Helmer - Wednesday, August 31st, 2011
No Comments »