By John Helmer, Moscow

In a three-day hearing in the UK High Court, which wound up on Monday of this week, Russian state shipping company Sovcomflot faced cost, indemnity and compensation claims for an estimated $180 million, filed by Yury Nikitin, Dmitry Skarga (right image), and Tagir Izmailov. They were the three defendants in the six-year court battle waged in London by the Sovcomflot shipping group, its chief executive Sergei Frank (left image), and Sovcomflot’s successive board chairmen, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Chief of Staff of the President, Sergei Naryshkin.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Want to throw rice at the bride and groom — Krasnodar will be glad to fill your order. For starting this January, Russia has become a net rice exporter for the first time in its history.

According to Alexander Korbut, spokesman for the Russian Grain Council, about 100,000 tonnes of short-grain rice have been shipped to Turkey. Grown in the southwestern Krasnodar region, on the verges of the Black Sea, Korbut told Fairplay: “The rice market is peculiar. Russia has just entered it, and a considerable period of time will be needed to confirm the principal consumers. The current situation on the market is favourable for Russia, but we don’t know how that will develop.”
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Sergei Generalov, controlling shareholder of Far Eastern Shipping Company (Fesco), lifted the lid yesterday off an intensifying contest among Russia’s transport moguls to redivide the state’s rail, box terminal and shipping concessions. These will be awarded before the presidential election in a year’s time by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The armchair warriors in London and Washington love nothing so much as an excuse for an invasion against an enemy too small to put up much of a fight, or inflict too many casualties on the invaders. But that’s because the parlour fires, in front of which their armchairs are placed, have a limitless supply of gas, no matter what the price.
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by John Helmer - Monday, February 28th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Man has been eating his best friend for at least 9,400 years – and that’s just in the US. In Russia, he’s been doing it for even longer. He’s still doing it.
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by John Helmer - Friday, February 25th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Oleg Deripaska will fail to swing Norilsk Nickel’s international shareholders into voting for his slate of candidates for the new board of directors at Norilsk, according to a report and proxy vote recommendation by Institutional Shareholder Services/Risk Metrics, a Washington, D.C.-based advisory specialist.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

A crack, though not yet a spill, has appeared in the Russian government’s plan to link state-owned oil producer Rosneft with BP in a multi-billion dollar joint venture for oil search in the Kara Sea.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Alrosa, the world’s number-1 diamond producer, has released a new planning document outlining production, earnings and diamond reserve targets after the start of three new underground mines, suggesting higher earnings than were calculated last year, and much longer mine life.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

As names go, Berezovsky is commonplace in Russia, though not as common in Russia as Brown is in the US or UK.
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by John Helmer - Monday, February 21st, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The paucity of materials on Russia in the Wikileaks archive revealed so far is odd, considering the significance of Russia as a potential threat in the US Government’s global threat assessments.
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by John Helmer - Friday, February 18th, 2011
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