By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Donald Trump (lead image*) isn’t making the major domestic or foreign policy decisions of his administration.  

Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff at the White House, is directing the militarization of domestic policymaking and propaganda; the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon are executing the foreign operations against Russia, China, Iran, Palestine, Yemen, Venezuela; Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent, the Commerce and Treasury Secretaries, are directing the trade war schemes. Trump’s tweets, some directly authored by Miller, follow their action, stamping presidential approval after the event. Trump’s press remarks — staged in small bursts in front of media prompters — create the appearance that Trump is running the show. The show, yes; the operations, no.

To patch over the gap between what Trump’s men are doing and what Trump says he is doing, the president repeats catchwords, slogans, jingles: “I am disappointed in Putin”; “if Russia’s not selling oil, they have no choice but to settle”; “if Europe did something with respect to China, I think China would probably maybe force an end to the war”; “the United States has been a sucker long enough in the world in terms of trade. Now, we’re doing unbelievably well, and we’re making more money than we’ve ever made”; “I actually said, Charlie [Kirk], someday I think you have a good chance of being president. I think you will be president, maybe”;  “the King of Saudi Arabia, a great gentleman — great gentleman, you all know him. He said, sir, your country was dead one year ago and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world and it’s true.”

Pressed to agree with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on warfighting strategy against Russia, Trump was unable to say what he wants from President Vladimir Putin, what terms he expects Putin to accept,  and what he will do if he won’t: “he’s let me down, he’s really let me down… He has let me down. I mean, he’s killing many people and he’s losing more people than he’s killing. I mean, frankly, the Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers. But, yeah, he’s let me down, I don’t like to see — it’s death. You know, it doesn’t affect the United States;” and then “Very simply, if the price of oil comes down, Putin’s going to drop out, he’s going to have no choice. He’s going to drop out of that war.”   

As Trump flew back to Washington from the UK, a prompted reporter asked: “is it time for a ceasefire to come?” Trump didn’t know what he will do next.  Instead, he replied: “Doesn’t feel like it. But at the right time, if I have to do it, it’ll be harsh.” The operation will follow; Trump’s posturing will come after.

Since Trump’s men understand this is how Trump is deciding policy retroactively, and both the NATO allies and the Kremlin understand the same thing, it is everybody’s calculation to compel Trump’s acquiescence by forcing the action pre-emptively leaving him no alternative, and presenting the successful outcome of their operations in picture-book briefings which combine shock and flattery. Trump is the first president in US history to sign written decision memoranda after the options have been pre-empted. He cannot remember what they were because he hasn’t read the papers.

Listen to the new podcast with Dimitri Lascaris on Reason2Resist revealing what Trump’s papers are saying.

Also revealed — what Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney doesn’t want known about his dismissal of Chrystia Freeland and her plan to retake the Canadian prime ministry if she, her US, Ukrainian, and Polish allies, and long-time financier George Soros can achieve their 2028 plan.

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by Editor - Sunday, September 21st, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In a media blitz this week, Yulia Navalnaya (lead image) has issued a video call on journalists to investigate her fresh allegations that Alexei Navalny was poisoned to death in his Russian prison on February 16, 2024. The anti-Russian media in the NATO capitals have rallied to report the claims.  So far, however, none of the evidence Navalanya claims to be holding, and which she cites in her appeal,  has been presented for independent viewing, authentication, or forensic expertise.

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by Editor - Wednesday, September 17th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Chrystia Freeland’s final leap at political power in her 12-year attempt to rule Canada ended yesterday when she fell flat on her face.  

Prime Minister Mark Carney, whose push has proved more kinetic than Freeland’s jump,  allowed this to be understood when he offered Freeland the less than face-saving post of reconstructing the Ukraine which her warfighting campaign against Russia has all but destroyed. The cost to Canada of this destruction since the Special Military Operation began in February 2022 has been C$22 billion, including about C$13 billion in loans which the Kiev regime cannot repay but which are being serviced from the interest earned on Russian assets seized by the NATO allies.  

Freeland’s ouster was so rushed, there was no time for her to explain what the hurry was in her departure, nor for Carney to prepare what Freeland would be doing as his special envoy to the Ukraine without any staff or diplomatic rank.  

In his official release, Carney appeared not to know that Freeland is resigning her parliamentary seat.

According to Carney’s announcement,   Freeland had “helped to secure historic trade negotiations, guide the response to a global pandemic, complete early learning and child care agreements across Canada, and…remove all federal barriers to internal trade.” Not a word about the priorities of  Freeland’s career, war against Russia and war against China. “I have asked Chrystia to serve as Canada’s new Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine,” Carney said, “in addition to her responsibilities as a Member of Parliament.”

Carney is believed to have authorized press leaks ahead of his cabinet meeting on Tuesday to reveal Freeland was resigning her combined portfolio of internal trade and transport. In the rush, Carney took several hours before deciding to split the portfolios and assign them to different individuals.   

After the cabinet meeting Freeland avoided the press. Returning to her office, she drafted the social media post of a letter which she addressed, not to the prime minister, but to “dear neighbours, dear Canadians.” She then announced: “I do not intend to run in the next federal election.”  As her reason for the exit, Freeland claimed she “is not leaving to spend more time with my family or because the burden of elected office is too heavy to bear.” Instead, “after twelve fulfilling years in public life, I know that now is the right time for me to make way for others and to seek fresh changes for myself.”

Freeland had her 57^th birthday last month.

A Canadian source in a position to know commented that there have been growing policy differences between Carney and Freeland. “Carney has signaled his willingness to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle (EV) imports in order to secure Chinese cooperation on their tariffs on Canadian canola. Freeland is recognized in Beijing as a China-hater who, as we know, made sabotaging Canada’s relationship with Beijing a top priority.”

Canola is Canada’s most valuable field crop and farm export, with farm cash receipts of C$12.9 billion in 2024. China had been importing about two-thirds of the Canadian canola crop until Beijing imposed a 100% tariff on canola oil and canola meal in March, and then a 76% tariff on canola seed in August.  This was retaliation against a series of hostile Canadian political and trade attacks on China, culminating in August 2024 in a 100% tariff on EV imports and a 25% tariff on imported Chinese steel and aluminium.  

Freeland’s “past behaviour”, said the source, “displays that she’s not at all trustworthy, let alone capable of putting the government’s goals in front of her own ambitions. Other members of cabinet didn’t hide their dislike of her from Carney. She has the reputation of blowing up cabinet meetings with clumsy, hysterical attempts to run everyone else’s business. That has threatened Carney. Freeland then underestimated his ruthlessness in getting rid of her.”

Beginning with the first reports in 2017 of Freeland’s grandfather’s career as a German military collaborator in World War II — spy, propagandist and genocide profiteer — to Freeland’s plotting with Biden Administration officials to replace Justin Trudeau as prime minister, the archive of DwB stories on Freeland has reached 82.   An album of the Freeland cartoons has been published in The Complete Dances with Bears Comic Book,  Chapter 5.

Here’s a selection at their original links for a keepsake of Freeland’s passing, and for the one thing she has been incapable of since she first arrived in Moscow as a journalist thirty years ago – laughter.

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by Editor - Tuesday, September 16th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When the Germans rolled through Russian defences in the Operation Barbarossa invasion of June 1941, the Soviet commander-in-chief Joseph Stalin ordered the executions of dozens of western army unit and air force commanders. Stalin’s reasons at the time were his suspicion of their treason;  a demonstration effect throughout the armed forces; and a cover-up of Stalin’s personal culpability in rejecting  intelligence warnings of the German invasion plans  and refusing to order advance preparations himself.

In February 2022, when the US and the European Union attacked the Russian Central Bank’s (CBR) reserves, taking control over €260 billion ($300 billion) in value  and preparing to transfer the interest on that principal, as well as tax,  to repay their own Russia warfighting budgets and loans to the Kiev regime,   there was no defence by the Russian Central Bank. There had been no advance preparations by the CBR for the likelihood of the attack. No one at the CBR has been suspended, dismissed, retired, or shot.

On the contrary, “I want to assure you that Russia’s financial authorities – the Government of the Russian Federation and the Central Bank – are acting professionally,” President Vladimir Putin declared as recently as last week at the Eastern Economic forum in Vladivostok. “Let me refrain from evaluating the Central Bank’s work. Let me note instead that our Central Bank is highly respected across the international finance community.”

In 2015 Euromoney, a publication owned by a UK private equity investment fund,   announced it was giving Elvria Nabiullina (lead image) its “Central Bank Governor of the Year” award.  

In 2017, The Banker, published in London by the Anglo-Japanese Financial Times, named Nabiullina its award winner as Central Banker of the year in Europe.  

The Kremlin press office was asked what Putin was referring to in his Vladivostok reference to  the “high respect across the international financial community”. The press spokesman replied: “Unfortunately, we can’t comment on this statement”.

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by Editor - Sunday, September 14th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Howdy Doody was the most famous puppet in US history who was made of wood. He lived between 1937 and 1978.  

He reappeared on a New York radio station this week in what the White House confirms was this dialogue:

 “And Putin, when he looks at you, President Trump, he looks at you like you’re a matinee idol, which you are by the way. He loves you; he loves you. And then he leaves, or he hangs up the phone and then he sends another bomb…I mean, what is this guy thinking? [Donald Trump]: I don’t know…But it seems that every time I think we’re close, he goes and drops another bomb on somebody and it’s just no good. It’s no good. I’m very surprised. Actually, I’m very surprised…Well, you know what, I’m going to have almost three and a half years and that’s a long time and we can get things solved. We can get almost, I think, everything — I think everything is solved in that period of time.”  

That evening, just before sitting down to dinner at Joe’s Seafood, a Washington, DC, restaurant, Trump came face to face with several women who sang six times: “Free DC, free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our time. Free DC, free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our time.” Trump used hand gestures to have the chorus removed.  

The next day, the White House social media office directed by Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller published this:  “What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!”   

by Editor - Wednesday, September 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On September 3 President Donald Trump accused Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un of “conspir[ing] against the United States of America”.  

Four days later on September 7, when asked by a reporter “Mr. President! Are you ready, are you ready to enter the second phase — Are you ready to enter the second phase of sanctions against Russia or punishing Putin”, Trump replied: “Yeah, I am.”  

Trump then promised to telephone Putin “over the next couple of days”, adding that this week at the White House “certain European leaders, are coming over to our country on Monday or Tuesday and, uh, individually. And I think we’re gonna get that settled. I think we’re gonna get it settled.”

By the start of Wednesday there has been no telephone call to Putin, and no European leaders have appeared in Washington to talk to Trump. Instead, Trump dialled into a conference call with EU leaders to announce he would join the European Union (EU) in a 100% penalty tariff on India and China for buying Russian oil on condition the EU moved first. As Trump was threatening, his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was meeting an EU delegation to determine if the EU can follow through over opposition from Hungary, Slovakia and other member states.

“We’re ready to go, ready to go right now, but we’re only going to do this if our European partners step up with us,” a US Treasury official briefed the Financial Times. “The president came on this morning and his view is that the obvious approach here is, let’s all put on dramatic tariffs  and keep the tariffs on until the Chinese agree to stop buying the oil. There really aren’t many other places that oil can go.” A second US official told the Japanese-owned propaganda platform against China: “Washington was prepared to mirror any tariffs on China and India imposed by the EU, potentially leading to a further increase in US levies on imports from both countries.” 

There was no corroboration of EU agreement on the US terms from David O’Sullivan, the EU sanctions official who led the European delegation at the US Treasury. US Treasury Secretary  Bessent was threatening in principle,  evasive in practice after meeting O’Sullivan. “The United States and European Union are aligned on the importance of ending the war in Ukraine,” Bessent tweeted.  “All options remain on the table as part of @POTUS’ strategy to support peace negotiations. Business as usual has not worked. We are willing to take strong measures against Russia, but our European partners must fully join us in this to be successful. I made this clear today when meeting with @EU_Commission Sanctions Envoy David O’Sullivan.”

The Kremlin responded that “this unprecedented number of sanctions that have been imposed against our country over the past four years has had no effect…no sanctions will be able to force the Russian Federation to change this stalwart position.”  

Putin had told reporters in Beijing on September 3 he is waiting for the commitment of the Trump administration “to find a solution, not just to issue appeals…We will see how it goes from here. If not, we will have to achieve the tasks set before us by military means.”  He then added in Vladivostok on September 5: “We have an open dialogue with President Trump. We have agreed to call each other, if need be, and talk. He knows that I am open to such talks, as well as he is – I know it. However, so far, based on the results of these consultations in Europe, we have not had any discussions.”  

Putin acknowledged also: “Regarding possible military contingents in Ukraine. This is one of the basic reasons for dragging Ukraine into NATO. So, if any troops appear there, especially now, during combat operations, we will deem them legitimate targets for destruction.  And if any decisions leading to peace, a lasting peace, are achieved, then I will not see the sense of their deployment in Ukraine, that’s it. If agreements are achieved, then no one should doubt that Russia will execute them in full. We will observe the security guarantees, which, of course, would be drafted both for Russia and Ukraine. And I will say it again: Russia will observe these agreements. Anyway, nobody has ever discussed it with us seriously, that’s that.”  

While Trump and Putin wait on each other, Putin and Xi appear to have agreed to begin state to state financing of the two countries’ energy trade, bypassing US and EU sanctions on Russian and international banks,  and replacing US dollar pricing and payment systems for their oil and gas trade. The Tianjin Declaration of last week, the 25-page communiqué of the Shanghai Cooperation Council (SCO) summit meeting chaired by Xi, had camouflaged the new details in a general commitment to “emphasize the important role of cooperation in the financial sphere in promoting economic growth in the SCO area”. Also, “given the instability in international energy markets, member states noted the importance of strengthening cooperation, including in the areas of energy security, energy infrastructure protection, promotion of investment cooperation.”  

Agreement by China to the new scheme was leaked to the Financial Times from unidentified Japanese sources. “China is preparing to reopen its domestic bond market to major Russian energy companies, in a shift of policy that reflects deepening diplomatic and economic ties between Beijing and Moscow. Two [Japanese] people familiar with the matter said senior Chinese financial regulators told top Russian energy executives at a late August meeting in China’s southern city of Guangzhou that they would support their companies’ plans to sell renminbi panda bonds. Such borrowing would be the first Russian corporate fundraising in mainland China since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the first Russian debt sold on China’s public onshore market since state aluminium producer Rusal’s panda bond issue raised a total Rmb1.5bn ($210mn) in 2017.”   

In Moscow, the strategic significance of the new Sino-Russian financing plan is acknowledged without fanfare. Read the analysis just published by Vzglyad, the Moscow security analysis platform.   

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by Editor - Tuesday, September 9th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Can film impresarios make profits out of Russia warfighting films that demonize Vladimir Putin?

Navalny the film won an Oscar, a Lola, a Bafta, and more. The size of the audience who have seen the film remains a secret of the producers, but the box office revenues the film has earned over the past three years have been reported as just $107,186.   As Oscar-award winners go, Navalny the film has been a media failure with western audiences, a very big lossmaker for the producers. And so the European warfighting organs are hoping for better earnings from the launch of a film  they calculate has already made more money as a book. This is The Wizard of the Kremlin which in its French edition won a French Academy prize and sold a half-million copies. The author is Giuliano da Empoli.

According to reports from the Venice Film Festival late last month, at its first screening The Wizard of the Kremlin film received “a hugely enthusiastic 10-minute standing ovation” and more than a dozen bravos from an audience which was invited to watch it, not charged. On stage the film’s lead actress, a Swede playing a Russian, reportedly ” wiped away tears as the ovation continued.”  

The BBC is uncertain: “The Wizard of the Kremlin is measured and methodical, so it is unlikely to be a big hit: Baranov might remark that it isn’t gaudy and kitsch enough. But, fictionalised though it might be, it is worth watching if you want to gain some insight into how Putin came to power, and how that power has been maintained.”  The Independent, owned by the Lebedev banking family, was sure the film was too soft. “What is bound to rankle many viewers, however, is the film’s softball portrayal of Putin overall. As shown here, he is no monster. Given the ongoing war in Ukraine, it doesn’t seem like the most propitious moment for a movie like this.”  Variety: “The way Law plays him, Putin is something almost scarier than a monster — a rational tyrant, a man to mess with, or even disagree with, at your peril. He doesn’t start out by coveting power (the powers that be have come to him), but he believes that raw power, from the top, is what the Russian people crave…he perfectly channels Putin’s cold-blooded glare, infusing him with a reptilian charisma. The real Vladimir Putin has a special duality: His eyes look like they want to kill you, his mouth doesn’t move a muscle. And Law nails that.”  

Who will pay money to be told this, again? The French state public company France Télévisions and the Disney corporation are hopeful as the producers of the film, along with the Gaumont company of the Seydoux family.   

But Da Empoli’s book has dropped out of the bookshores because its sale price is less than the cost of displaying it. s. The paperback is down to $2.29, one-tenth pubklisher’s launch price.  Reread this review of the book.  

Asked in Beijing what he thinks of the film, Putin replied to the reporter: “Anastasiya Savinykh: Mr President, if I may, let us stick to the cinema. A film has been released in the West with you as one of the characters. The film is titled “The Wizard of the Kremlin.” Have you seen it? Have they shown you any frames? By the way, British actor Jude Law played you in this film. Have you met? Vladimir Putin: No, I have not seen this film. This is the first time I am hearing about it. I cannot say anything about it, because I have not seen it.”  

Read on, to save yourself the cinema ticket and the book charge.

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by Editor - Tuesday, September 9th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Listen to the groundbreaking discussion with Nima Alkhorshid today.  

The full discussion paper of Vyacheslav Molotov to the Soviet Presidium, elaborating on the draft “General European Agreement on Collective Security in Europe” and raising the possibility of the USSR joining NATO was dated March 26, 1954. Read it in full here.  

For comparison, read the two draft treaties on mutual security presented to the US and NATO by the Russian Foreign Ministry on December 21, 2021, here.   For analysis of both treaties at the time, click.  

For the evidence from the declassified US presidential archives of the treasons of Boris Yeltsin and Anatoly Chubais, click to read from 2016;   from 2018;  and from 2020.   

by Editor - Tuesday, September 9th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When you sit down to read, watch,  or listen to  website, blog, Twitter, or podcast on the war against Russia, do you combine it with a glass of your favourite alcohol – or is that what you’d like but it’s forbidden on your jogging track, car, bus,  or train commute?

The answer for you now is Raymond Chandler’s best line from The Long Goodbye (1953): “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.”

Chandler’s other best lines for now are: “we make the finest packages in the world, Mr Marlowe. The stuff inside is mostly junk” – this is how to think about President Donald Trump’s MAGA peacemaking. “If you believe in an idea, you don’t own you, it owns you” – that’s the Marxist-Leninist reality that a generation of Russians were educated to forget from 1991 and are having to re-learn today.  And “nothing says goodbye like a bullet” – that’s what President Vladimir Putin meant when he told reporters the other day in Beijing: “if common sense ultimately prevails, an acceptable option for ending this conflict can be agreed upon…We will see how it goes from here. If not, we will have to achieve the tasks set before us by military means.”

According to the most recent surveys of the American podcast audience, more than half listen as a combination of entertainment, lesson, and diversion at the same time – to have something to do when they are doing something else. That’s the big podcast difference from long-read media  – you can read Dances with Bears and drink beer or wine, but you can’t take off your own or someone else’s clothes at the same time.  Only about one in ten US listeners to podcasts do it in the old-fashioned way of desktop or laptop read.  

There’s a hitch, though. Packaging information in podcast form may lead to less short-term comprehension and less long-term memory retention than occurs in reading.  To date, there is research concluding this is true;   and also research that it’s false.  

There also appear to be national, ethnic and racial differences between blog readers and podcast listeners.   While more and more of the global audience is opting for the podcast to replace the website, blog and tweet stream, and spending increasing amounts of time on podcasts at the expense of time reading print,   in the US, the podcast option is preferred by more blacks, Hispanics and Asians than whites.   

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, whichever age, ethnic or gender group you belong to, and however you prefer to think, Dances with Bears has come up with a solution for you:  this is to make podcasts with different geographical coordinates, and follow them up with long-read backgrounders on the Dances with Bears website.

There are now four podcasts for you to tune into.

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by Editor - Tuesday, September 9th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The three questions are:

1. Has any politician in the NATO Coalition of the Willing Warfighters against Russia lied more brazenly to win his domestic election than Mark Carney (not counting Vladimir  Zelensky)?

2. Has any politician in the Coalition calculated more mistakenly that spending more on the losing war in Europe would appease and ingratiate President Donald Trump, and relieve his country of Trump’s penalty tariffs?

3. Has any politician in the Coalition benefited more personally and more directly in his bank account from fighting the Russians in the Ukraine and capitulating to Trump (except for Trump himself and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen)?

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by Editor - Monday, September 8th, 2025
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