By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Lord Anthony Hughes (lead image, left), the chairman of the newly appointed inquiry into  allegations of Novichok plots and death in England in 2018, revealed on Friday that a British lawyer has been engaged to represent Sergei (centre) and Yulia Skripal (right) in the investigation he is conducting. This may mean they are alive.  It does not mean the Skripals will be allowed to appear and to answer questions freely in public.

Sergei Skripal has not been seen in public since the day of the alleged Novichok attack, March 4, 2018. He has not been heard on the telephone by family members since June 26, 2019.   Yulia Skripal was last seen in a British and US directed interview at a US bomber base  in May 2018;    her last telephone call was heard on November 20, 2020.   

Hughes’s staff and spokesman refuse to identify the Skripals’ lawyer by name.

At the London court session on March 25, Hughes was told by the counsel to the proceeding that earlier this month a letter had been received “from legal representatives of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, representing their designation as core participants in the inquiry. They had not sought interested person status in the inquest. In any event, since the terms of reference for this inquiry expressly require you to investigate the events surrounding their poisoning, we submit that their significant interest in the matters to which the inquiry relates is self evident and, accordingly, we support the that matter of core participant status, but that is all I was proposing to say about that issue.”

Hughes then read the proposed list of core participants, including the Skripals. “I designate core participant to all those listed in paragraph 14 of your written submissions and outlined to me orally just now,” he said.

An hour later Martin Smith, the solicitor to the inquiry, was asked to name the legal representative of the Skripals; he refused. Hughes, he said, “will need to designate the lawyer concerned as the Core Participants’ recognised legal representative following this hearing. When he has done so, the Inquiry will publish this information.”

by Editor - Sunday, March 27th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the history of the world wars, or the last century of wars in Europe, or the wars the US has waged since 1945, it has never happened that what the President of the US says, and what the head of the front-line country which the US is fighting to defend says, have mattered less than what Joseph Biden and Vladimir Zelensky say now.

The reason is that no US president running a war has ever been as incapacitated in command and control as Biden, nor as impotent among his own officials as Zelensky. Rule by crock and rule by stooge aren’t rule at all.

US public opinion polls measuring Biden’s job approval rating demonstrate that most American voters already realize this. The growing spread between American voters’ disapproval and approval of Biden’s performance since the Russian operation began on February 24 indicates also that this understanding is growing.

But this isn’t anti-war sentiment, let alone an American stop-the-war movement. At present US officials headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken aim to fight the war to the capitulation or destruction of Russia; they will fight to the last Ukrainian to achieve this goal; they will negotiate no end-of-war terms;  they are not influenced or constrained by American public opinion or votes. Not yet.

Zelensky has declared he is in favour of negotiations to end the war; he has declared he is opposed to the terms which President Vladimir Putin and the Russian leadership have made clear, long before the war began and ever since, were the casus belli, the objectives for which they are fighting. The reason Zelensky regularly contradicts himself is that his power – his survival in office – depends on the Galician faction headquartered around Lvov, whose  only occupation is permanent warfighting, and whose only income flows from the US and the NATO alliance. They are as committed as Blinken to operating the Ukraine as a gun platform targeted at Russia; the Galicians will destroy all of eastern Ukraine as they withdraw, in order to keep firing. The Germans thought and did as much on the same battlefields eighty years ago.

Biden, Blinken, Zelensky, and the Galicians also hate Russians with more racial virulence than has ever been shown by Americans towards a European enemy in the history of American wars.

Race hatred towards Russians now far exceeds American public opinion measured towards Germans during World War I or World War II.  It is only matched, according to the US War Department’s surveys of American soldiers, by hatred towards the Japanese. During that war, six times the number of GIs polled said they “would really like to kill” a Japanese soldier as said the same for a German. When combat veterans were asked “what would you like to see happen to the Japanese and the Germans after the war”, almost one in two GIs from the Pacific theatre supported wiping out the entire Japanese nation; one in eight from the European theatre said that of Germany. During the Vietnam War, US race hatred for the Vietnamese was even less. 

If these lessons are true, or if the commands in Moscow and in Washington believe them, what end to the war can be negotiated short of the destruction of one side or the other?

The simpleton’s conclusion is none – there can be no end to this war unless the Ukraine is destroyed, or Russia, or Europe, or the US. How simple-minded is that?

by Editor - Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

One of the peculiarities of the NATO alliance’s sanctions war against Russian businessmen is that the biggest of Russia’s bank robbers and corporate thieves have not been targeted by the press nor by the US Treasury. Indeed, the more criminal their conduct, and the more money they have stolen from Russia, the more welcome and secure the US, British, French, and Cypriot governments have made them and their bank accounts feel.

This is known as the Lucky Luciano gambit in the current war. Originally, between 1942 and 1946 that was an agreement between the imprisoned New York mafia boss Luciano, his treasurer Meyer Lansky, and his chief mobsters Albert Anastasia and Vito Genovese to assist US military intelligence, Army and Navy operations in their invasion of Sicily; and to go on helping the US prevent the Italian left from winning the postwar elections. In return, Luciano’s imprisonment was made more comfortable, then stopped, and in 1946 he was released to live in Italy (lead image, Luciano at home in Naples in 1948).

In the new Russian deal, the terms are that the runaway robbers must publicly blame President Vladimir Putin for prosecuting them for their crimes; declare themselves in support of regime change; assist MI6 and CIA; and pay for opposition propaganda. The case of Sergei Pugachev, who stole $1 billion from the Central Bank of Russia, is the best known of these deals. Convicted in the British courts of lying and protected by asylum in France, Pugachev has been promoted by the Financial Times of London and the Murdoch media group.  His story has turned into a well-known book, and expensive out-of-court retractions.  

The case of Leonid Lebedev, robber of Russian oilfields and electricity utilities,  has been waged to failure in the London and Cyprus courts. It has just restarted in the New York state Supreme Court. New York is where Lebedev has banked his cash. It’s where he has pursued since 2014 his claim to be paid $2.7 billion for a stake in Russian oilfields for which he was paid, and signed off,  years earlier.

by Editor - Monday, March 21st, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow & Stanislas Balcerac, Warsaw
  @bears_with

In almost a thousand years of military history, the proverb has been a reminder that an apparently tiny omission or detail overlooked on the battlefield can have ruinous consequences for the kingdom. “For want of a nail”, the saying goes, “the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost.” Until the end: “For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”  

The story of the Polish, Czech and Slovenian prime ministers who messaged that they had travelled to Kiev last Tuesday to meet Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is one of these proverbials – it is missing the details which prove the meeting took place in Kiev, where they claim they went, and not in Przemysl, Poland, where the details prove they were.

In response to the first report  revealing this evidence, the Slovenian prime minister Janez Jansa told Slovenian state television RTV he had met with Zelensky on the “first floor of the presidential palace, not in the basement, but under strict security measures.”  He added that Kiev was not surrounded despite the Russian forces attacking from both the west and the east, air raid alarms, and citywide curfew after dark.

Jansa faces a national election on April 24, and over the past month he has lost his lead in the polls.   He had announced he would visit Kiev on February 24, but that visit was cancelled on March 1 because it was judged to be dangerously unsafe.     In the interval, Jansa’s SDS party dropped another two points in the election polls to the rising new opposition party, the Freedom Movement (GS).  According to N1 Info, a Balkan news platform affiliated with CNN, Jansa’s “advisers…had been in the Ukrainian capital city to prepare a meeting of PM Janez Jansa with the Ukrainian top officials, which was due to have been held on 24 February, and was cancelled [on March 1] due to the start of Russia’s invasion.”

Jansa was asked directly on Saturday to “clarify why you judged you must cancel your planned trip to Kiev on March 1 because of the security risks at the time, but judged the security risks to be less in order for you to proceed to Kiev on March 15? What lessened the security risks to you and your delegation in the interval?”  Jansa was also asked to explain “since the Slovenian Embassy in Kiev was closed and evacuated on March 15, where did you spend the evening of March 15, before your return to Poland? With whom did you have dinner that evening?”

Jansa has refused to answer. His spokesman Uros Urbanija has accused journalists asking the questions of working for the political opposition.

by Editor - Sunday, March 20th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow & Stanislas Balcerac, Warsaw
  @bears_with

On Tuesday March 15, the leaders of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia met the Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelensky (lead image, right), in a room.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (left) and Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, together with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and their Slovene counterpart Janez Jansa insist in unison that their meeting room was located in Kiev; that they got there by taking a 7-hour train ride from the Polish railway station of Przemysl, and that they returned the same way after 24 hours.

In yesterday’s report  we presented the evidence available at the time to indicate there was no geolocational evidence that the room was in Kiev, and that the summit meeting took place there. This account is being disputed by some sources; corroborated by others. A Warsaw government source who reviewed yesterday’s report comments: “we will probably never know the truth.”

According to another Polish source, “no head of the Polish security detail would allow the PM and the Deputy PM to travel together to a theatre of military operations. Especially after the close encounters in Georgia in 2008 when [President Lech]  Kaczynski blamed the Russian Army for shooting at him.   And if the head of the SOP [Polish State Protection Service, Służba Ochrony Państwa], allowed it, he should be fired.”

by Editor - Friday, March 18th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow & Stanislas Balcerac, Warsaw
  @bears_with

The summit meeting of East European leaders, hosted in Kiev by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky on March 15 was fabricated by the Polish government, with Polish secret service agents playing the part of journalists, and fake photographs of the meeting, press briefing, and train journey prepared by Zelensky’s press office.

The operation was designed by the Poles to promote their role in support of the Ukraine, the Ukrainian refugees, and in defence of Europe against Russia, and seek new European, American,  and NATO alliance funds and military equipment.

According to the Ukrainian publicity, the operation was designed to promote the appearance that Zelensky’s regime is in control of Kiev, and to accelerate their application for admission to the European Union (EU).

The Anglo-American media have reported the meeting, as announced by Petr Fiala, the Czech  prime minister, with “the aim…to express the European Union’s unequivocal support for Ukraine and its freedom and independence,”    

The result of the summit meeting, according to the Financial Times in London, was “a show of European solidarity even as Russian shelling continued on residential neighbourhoods in the Ukrainian capital. The trip by the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia is the most high-profile visit to Kyiv since Russia invaded the country on February 24.”  

 “It is here, in war-torn Kyiv, that history is being made,” the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced. “It is here that freedom fights against the world of tyranny. It is here that the future of us all hangs in the balance.”

Morawiecki and the western press were lying – there was no meeting in Kiev. Instead, the meeting was staged at the Polish rail junction town of Przemysl, 95 kilometres west of Lvov (Lviv), and 20 kms inside the Polish frontier with the Ukraine.

In a report published by the Associated Press (AP) bureau in Warsaw, “the long journey over land from Poland to Kyiv by Morawiecki, Poland’s deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski and Prime Ministers Petr Fiala of the Czech Republic and Janez Jansa of Slovenia sent the message that most of Ukraine still remains in Ukrainian hands.”  

The evidence gathered from sources in Warsaw and from analysis of the videos and photographs published on the meeting proves there was no “long journey”; no meeting in Kiev or in Lvov, the Galician region capital, which is the operating headquarters of the Ukrainian government. From the evidence provided by the Poles and also by Zelensky’s publicity staff, it is now clear that only a small part of western Ukraine remains in Ukrainian hands.  Zelensky himself is now in Polish hands.

by Editor - Thursday, March 17th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In fighting the first-ever war of elimination between the US and Russia, the ghost of Lenin is haunting the Russian oligarchs. But it’s the ghost of Stalin in the corridors of the Kremlin.

by Editor - Wednesday, March 16th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Nothing is more certain than that wars make fortunes for gunmakers and pandemics make fortunes for vaccine makers.

It’s uncertain whether it’s the market, the politics, or the science which advances some vaccines at the expense of others.  In the 150-year history of medical markets, the Covid-19 vaccines have been fastest from the science to the money – faster and further ahead of the vaccines for measles, hepatitis, cervical cancer, and polio.  At this speed, profit and share price have done most of the talking, followed by the politics of regulator approval. It’s too soon for science to measure and report the long-term benefit versus harm of these Covid-19 vaccines, especially the genetic engineering types known as messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA).  

After two years of the coronavirus, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports there are 148 vaccines currently under clinical testing.   It’s quite late for most of them to make back their cost, let alone earn super profits.

The US has developed two of the vaccines, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), and with German science, produced and marketed a third, Pfizer-BioNTech. China has developed and marketed three major vaccines – Sinopharm, CoronaVac, Convidecia – and several minor ones.  India has produced more than three, as have Cuba and Iran. Turkey, Kazakhstan, and the UK have produced one each; the last of them, Oxford-Astra-Zeneca is the runner-up to Pfizer in  reach worldwide.  France’s Sanofi has produced one, but it has yet to reach market.  

Russia has produced three Covid-19 vaccines – Sputnik (Sputnik V and Sputnik Lite), EpiVacCorona, and CoviVac.  

Vaccine market entry decided by national and international regulators is a measure of political and corporate power; global dosage totals are the result. Pfizer has dominated the European Union market with roughly three times the number of doses administered than all its competitors combined. In rank order after Pfizer come Moderna, Astra-Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Sputnik, Sinovac and Sinopharm.   In the US market, Pfizer dominates with a 59% share; Moderna with 38%; Johnson & Johnson with just 3%. Non-American vaccines have been kept out of the American market entirely. That isn’t the result of science.   

But in the world as a whole, China and India lead in the aggregate of doses; Cuba, the United Arab Emirates, and Chile lead in the number of doses administered per hundred people.  

By contrast with the global and European standards, Russians have been more resistant to vaccination and more skeptical of the science. With a dosage per hundred people of 111, the Russian vaccination rate has been half the European Union average;  a third the US rate; about equal to Honduras or Pakistan.  

In the Russian market this is the short story of CoviVac —  the vaccine which has tried to make its way against oligarch money, Moscow politics, and the paradoxical contest of one of  the most advanced vaccine science establishments in the world with one of the most coronavirus skeptical  of populations.

by Editor - Monday, March 14th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

A new judge has been appointed out of retirement by the British Government to run a public inquiry into the cause of death of Dawn Sturgess in July 2018.  He is Anthony Hughes, Lord Hughes of Ombersley, 73, who retired as a judge of the Supreme Court, the highest of the British courts, in 2018. A specialist in criminal law, he was a Court of Appeal judge between 2006 and 2013, and a High Court judge from 1997 to 2003.

The Hughes appointment was announced in the House of Commons on Thursday.  

The cause of Sturgess’s death was declared by British government officials before the medical evidence and witnesses had been examined and tested in court and in public. The government has published its conclusion on the website of the Sturgess inquest. “Dawn Sturgess was pronounced dead at Salisbury District Hospital on 8 July 2018. The post mortem indicated the cause of her death was Novichok poisoning.”  

This allegation has been part of the government’s narrative that the Russian-made nerve agent Novichok was brought to London, and then to Salisbury, by two Russian soldier assassins as part of a plot ordered by the Kremlin to kill double agent, Sergei Skripal. The attack on him on March 4, 2018, failed.

Skripal, as well as his daughter Yulia Skripal, survived, although not to tell the tale.

For four years now they have been held incommunicado by the British secret services; they may be imprisoned; they may be dead.  They have been excluded from giving any evidence in court on what happened to them. They have been prevented from contacting their family in Russia, and speaking in public and to the press.

Hughes’s appointment this week follows the controversial and unexplained replacements of two coroners investigating the chain of Novichok allegations leading to Sturgess’s death. Hughes himself was not picked for the post for several months. 

With an unusually modest public career record and no media reporting of his judgements over his  21-year career on the bench, Hughes appears to be about as obscure a figure as the government could have found.

However, the archive of his Court of Appeal judgements reveals that Hughes is a stickler for the criminal law rules on the inadmissibility of tainted and hearsay evidence,  and on rejecting faulty directions by judges to juries before their verdicts.  Whether Hughes has been selected for the Novichok job  because officials believe he can be counted on to stick to the official narrative, or whether his record for quashing unsafe convictions will prevail this time round is about to be tested.

by Editor - Friday, March 11th, 2022
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The first Moscow casualties of the US and European plan targeting President Vladimir Putin and  triggering Kremlin regime change have been revealed in the release over the past ten days of three  presidential decrees and a half-dozen implementing orders from the Russian prime ministry.  

The breaking news is that there are no casualties — but one rumour of one casualty circulated by the spokesman of the president, Dmitry Peskov, in order to deny it.

Early on Wednesday afternoon, the state news agency RIA-Novosti published the headline,  “The Kremlin knows nothing about the rumours of Nabiullina’s resignation, Peskov said.”  He was referring to the Governor of the Russian Central Bank (CBR), Elvira Nabiullina, who has been in the job since 2013.

The 10-line report went on: “’No, we don’t know about that. The president has repeatedly assessed [favourably] the work of the Central Bank,’ Peskov said, answering a question from journalists whether the Kremlin is aware of the alleged resignation of Elvira Nabiullina from the post of head of the Central Bank and how the president assesses the work of the Central Bank. Earlier, Peskov said that Putin repeatedly praised the work of the Central Bank in general and its head Elvira Nabiullina in particular.”  

Until Peskov issued this denial, there was no trace of a rumour in the Russian media that Nabiullina was thinking of resigning, or that the Kremlin had decided to remove her.

There has been active public criticism of Nabiullina’s decision to raise the Central Bank lending rate to 20%, and her apparent unpreparedness to combat the US sanctions, which have frozen more than $450 billion in Central Bank currency reserves, and cut Russia’s leading banks from the SWIFT transaction system.   

Leading the attack on Nabiullina has been Sergei Glazyev, the  former Kremlin economic adviser and now the minister in charge of macroeconomic policy at the Eurasian Economic Commission.  Glazyev has been joined by Mikhail Delyagin, an economist and State Duma deputy. They have accused Nabiullina of “aiding the enemy”.

“If our country is a sovereign state,” Delyagin said on television  on March 4, “then why is Ms. Nabiullina still the head of the Bank of Russia, and not under investigation? We have people in jail for economic crimes, and yet a person who has already caused the economy to crash in 2014 and is going to do it for the second time feels just fine at her freedom.”

What can be detected in the series of Putin decrees and orders by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin is that a group of officials led by Mishustin, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Federal Security Service Director (FSB) Mikhail Bortnikov, have taken charge of the new scheme to restrict Russian debt repayments to creditors in countries listed as hostile. This group is known as the Commission for Control of Foreign Investments (CCFI). According to Mishustin’s order No. 431-r of March 6, 2022, Nabiullina is not a member.

by Editor - Thursday, March 10th, 2022
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