by John Helmer - Sunday, January 10th, 2010
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We are taking our New Year break, but you’ll see – we’ll be back shortly on the run.

by John Helmer - Thursday, December 31st, 2009
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http://www.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/20091231/LTN20091231035.pdf
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Many things can make a person greater than he or she really is, except time.

Time activates the bacteria that strip the flesh off the bones, until only a forensic pathologist can detect the tiny signs of individuality; and even they add up to nothing more than a catalogue of pain and death.

Time unravels the outcomes of all endeavours. The maddest passions, the wildest exploits, the most ruthless ambitions, the most victorious strategy – all lose their genius in time.

I was brought up on the reverse. I read, and accordingly was certain, that mankind produced heroes whose deeds outlived themselves. Even small deaths, the ones we as schoolboys used to stand at attention to remember twice or three times a year, defied time. The evidence of that was surely that we were standing there saluting, wasn’t it?
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 30th, 2009
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Alrosa announced last week that it has appointed Vasily Grabtsevich as a special senior executive for managing relations between the two controlling shareholders of the company, the federal government in Moscow and the Sakha republic government in Yakutsk. The federal government controls almost 51% of the closed shareholding of Alrosa; Sakha controls 40%.

The creation of the new executive post at the vice president level, and the naming of a trusted subordinate of regional president, Vyacheslav Shtirov (centre figure), indicates the extent to which the new Alrosa CEO, Fyodor Andreyev (rear right), is intent on eliminating informal mechanisms and mediators, who have dominated the sensitive inter-government relationship under previous chief executives, Alexander Nichiporuk and Sergei Vybornov.
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by John Helmer - Monday, December 28th, 2009
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At the Reichenbach Falls, May 4, 1891

This is how the two greatest criminal minds of the 19th century came to grips, and set the course for the history of Russia in both the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sherlock Holmes (right) met James Moriarty (left) in hand to hand combat, and the two of them followed Holmes’s hat (extreme left) downwards. But despite the appearances, not to the death of either of them. And so it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the plaque at the Falls today, which reads “at this fearful place, Sherlock Holmes vanquished Professor Moriarty, on 4 May 1891”, is a piece of Swiss confectionery, and not a very tasteful one at that.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, December 27th, 2009
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We interrupt this news bulletin to bring
you a broadcast from Captain Obvious
on location live above the Kremlin
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by John Helmer - Thursday, December 24th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Evraz, the largest of Russia’s integrated steel and mining groups, has reported that an underground detonation of explosives in a shaft of its mine Yestyuninskaya — part of the group’s Vysokogorsky iron-ore combine — has killed at least nine miners, and another four are still missing. The incident near the city of Nizhny Tagil, in the Sverdlovsk region, where Evraz operates its lead Russian steelmill, occurred Wednesday at a depth of 180 metres. A local police source said that about 4 tonnes of ammonium-based explosive had detonated while being trasnsported in shaft trolleys.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, December 24th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Sovcomflot (SCF), the state owned Russian tanker operator, released this week a board-approved strategy for the next five years, proposing to invest $5.5 billion with a combination of new borrowings and share sales over a six-year period. This capital outlay on a fleet that already counts 146 vessels, with another 16 on shipyard order, is unprecedented.

According to Sovcomflot board chairman, Sergei Naryshkin, a career associate of Prime minister Vladimir Putin and a deputy prime minister in the present Russian government, the “strategic tasks for SCF Group from 2010 to 2015 include both further growth in the SCF Group’s share of servicing Russia’s seaborne exports , the provision of integrated logistical solutions for offshore upstream oil and gas projects, and the continuing expansion of traditional shipping services in the global market.” The statement is cited in the company’s posting of the results of its final board meeting for the year, on December 18. The full text can be read here: http://www.sovcomflot.ru/npage.aspx?did=57531
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
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