By John Helmer, Moscow

 @bears_with

Thousands of readers have been trying to read the latest stories on this website. So many in fact that they have been fooling our defence forces into thinking they are drones – not the sort which the Houthis have been operating successfully in Saudi Arabia, or the Turks less than successfully in  Libya. More the home-made contraptions which the US is paying its proxies to attack Hmeimim, the Russian airbase in northern Syria.

Defeating drone swarm warfare requires electronic jamming technology which we keep secret for obvious reasons.

You can tell our secrets are working when you encounter delays in website display and other functions. There are also filters and other devices protecting different parts of the website, text and photographs. If you are a genuine reader of investigative reporting, please be patient – blame the wait on the disgruntled targets of our recent stories.

by Editor - Sunday, November 10th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Under threat of formal investigation for breaking the law and lying to the press, David Ridley (lead image), the English county coroner in charge of investigating the alleged Novichok poisoning death of Dawn Sturgess, has announced a new inquest hearing. This week through the coroner’s office in Salisbury, a new date was confirmed:  the next court session is scheduled to take place on February 18, 2020.  Sturgess died on July 8, 2018.

Asked to explain his reason for another four months of delay, Ridley refused to say that fresh evidence in the case has been found, or is expected to be uncovered by continuing police investigation. Instead, he has asked the press spokesman for the Wiltshire County Council to claim on his behalf that there is “complex legal argument in respect of which the Senior Coroner needs to give appropriate and careful consideration to before handing down a written ruling”.

The coroner’s silence signals that after fifteen months of investigation by one of the largest police, military and intelligence service operations in recent British forensic history, the allegation that there was a Russian chemical warfare attack in England last year cannot be substantiated in a court of law.  (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, November 6th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Not everything that glisters is gold, Shakespeare wrote as a warning about the seeming value of precious metal. Nor plisters is platinum.

The shine has been off for years now because the price of platinum has fallen steadily, and because the risks of mining it in South Africa have accelerated even faster. South Africa, with more than 90% of global reserves and supplying almost 70% of mine production of the metal, remains the market leader. But  on account of the country’s political corruption, collapse of infrastructure, miner wage strikes,   and falling mineable metal grades, the country has become an unstable, high-risk, high-cost source. So the stock markets for listed South African-based miners have been slashing the share price and devaluing the metal the companies have yet to dig up and sell.

Russia, which is the world’s second largest source of platinum reserves and mine production, is much more attractive by comparison:  South Africa’s loss is Russia’s gain. And not just for Norilsk Nickel, the dominant Russian miner, but also for small platinum mining companies. Right now, they say they have the proven deposits; what they need is the cash to pay for the mining operations to dig it out, refine and sell it.

The problem for Russian platinum miners is that the supply of relatively low-cost alluvial –  river-dredged — sources of the metal are petering out. To make up for this, junior Russian miners must raise investment to finance costly underground excavation. If they succeed, their combined output of platinum will double. It’s on speculation of this that the share price of Eurasia Mining quadrupled in London last week. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, November 4th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In our last episode, Denis Diderot, the French philosopher in Paris, had sold his library to the Empress Catherine in St. Petersburg. For his bonus, he had received a ticket to meet and talk to Catherine directly. At their first meeting at a masked ball in the Winter Palace, Diderot was wearing his old black suit and a borrowed wig. “Monsieur Diderot, do you see that door?” the Empress told him.  “It will be open to you every day from three to five.”

President Vladimir Putin (lead image, right) has known Arkady Rotenberg (left) for much longer, and the connecting door between them has been open for much, much longer. Recently, on the account of the esteem in which the former holds the latter, it was arranged that the state monopoly on the enlightenment of Russia’s schoolchildren should be given to Rotenberg. That’s to say, the monopoly concession paid out of the state budget for the publication and distribution of school textbooks produced by a group of companies Rotenberg controls.  

In our first episode, Diderot was shy towards the ruler of Russia. In our second episode, Rotenberg is also shy. He says the Caribbean company which controls the enlightenment concession has nothing to do with him. Read on, as the philosopher turns sophist. (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, October 29th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It doesn’t suit any of the sides in the US presidential campaign to acknowledge that the terms President Vladimir Putin agreed this week for the Turkish invasion and occupation of northern Syria to become permanent are not those which Russia’s Defence Ministry, General Staff, Foreign Ministry and Foreign Intelligence Service proposed instead.

That’s too complex a point in the American political contest between President Donald Trump, his supporters and opponents. So complex, in fact, that Trump is gaining nothing in domestic job approval rating in the polls, as he intended his Syrian “troop withdrawal” and “save the oil” moves to achieve. 

This is also too fine a point for the alternative media to concede  in their competition for audience (and money) with the mainstream media. Both of them share the idea that Putin is the dominant decision-maker in Moscow. To alt-media writers and publishers, that’s a good thing; to the mainstream media that’s a bad thing, a very bad thing. The truth of the matter – the Russian political fact of the matter – is beside the point to both. American exceptionalists being what they are, rightwing imperialists and leftwing imperialists, Holocaust and climate warming deniers included, there is no room in the present American discourse for the facts on the ground. On the ground in Syria, or on the ground in Moscow.

The big fact on the ground that’s being missed in North America is that Putin has agreed to another Turkish invasion of a neighbouring country. This was not Kremlin policy at the time of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. It wasn’t Kremlin policy last September when Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on terms for the temporary protectorate of Idlib.    In the run-up to the negotiations in Sochi on Tuesday (October 22), this was not the Russian policy consensus toward the Turkish invasion of northern Syria, nor toward the options for driving the Turks back where they belong.

Half-measures are what turned out. In Russian strategy and politics, the outcome could have been worse, so half-measures seem to be better than pushing Erdogan back towards the US and NATO, as Russians believe to be his genuine preference.

In American presidential politics, the outcome in Sochi could hardly, ironically,  have been better. To Trump’s critics and the war party in Washington, Trump has been shown up to be out-smarted and weak in the face of Putin’s initiative. To Trump’s supporters and the anti-war party, Putin and Erdogan have made a better agreement towards ending the war in Syria than the one Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed the week before.

This is confusing. It’s also temporary. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, October 24th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were both born under the sign of Libra. The zodiac directs them, on the positive side, to be cooperative and diplomatic; on the negative side, to be indecisive and vacillating. For likes, Librans click most on harmony and balance.

October 21 was Netanyahu’s birthday, and for the fourth time in five years Putin (born October 7) telephoned to wish him well. More than that, as Netanyahu was struggling – failing, in fact – to assemble a parliamentary coalition with enough votes to keep him in office, Putin declared: “You are by rights highly respected by your compatriots and by people outside Israel. We in Russia know you as a firm proponent of strengthening friendly ties between our countries and respect you for making a huge personal contribution to the development of mutually beneficial cooperation in a variety of fields. I highly value our constructive and business-like relations. I hope to be able to continue our substantive dialogue and fruitful joint efforts in the interests of Russian and Israeli people, as well as regional security and stability.”

This is a very odd choice of exaggerations and misrepresentations for the Russian head of government  to pass to another head of government – especially one who has just lost a national election;   faces  indictment for corruption;  and directs a policy of warmaking against two of Russia’s battlefield allies, Syria and Iran, not to mention allowing his air force to shoot Russian airmen out of the sky to their deaths.   

When Putin told the Arab media last week that his principle is “Russia will never be friends with one country against another”,   he was making an exception for Israel. But why of all the Israelis who celebrate birthdays does Putin pick on Netanyahu? (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, October 23rd, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

After one of the longest, bitterest negotiations ever held between President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov forced the Turks into an agreement for a Turkish military enclave inside Syrian territory between Tal Abiad and Ras Al-Ain (Sari Kani). That is less than one-quarter of the Syrian territory Erdogan was demanding at the start of the Sochi talks. 

The western towns of Manbij and Kobani will remain Syrian, guaranteed by Russian arms and denied to Operation Peace Spring, as the Turks are calling their invasion since October 9.  

The Turkish advance eastwards along the Syrian Highway M4 to the Iraqi border has been stopped. The Syrian Army will reoccupy the eastern zone to the Yarubiya crossing, with Russian military police on the ground; that also means the Russian Air Force in the air.

The practical result is that Russia accepts that the Turkish capture of Tal Abiad and Ras-Al-Ain since October 9 will not be reversed. This territory will thus be added to the Turkish hold on Afrin and Idlib in Syria’s northwest. Shoigu told  reporters there was no discussion of  how long the Turkish forces will occupy these areas. This is a major Russian concession to the Turkish demand for permanent military occupation and partition of Syria.

The Russians believe this concession is worth making to the Turks so long as the Americans are forced out; this is the message Putin has relayed to the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  

According to a statement by Lavrov, the paper which Erdogan agreed last Thursday (October 17) in Ankara with US Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been dismissed. “We do not particularly look at the United States and its stance. That stance is quite variable and contradictory, and of course, the coalition led by the United States is in Syria illegally, this is well known,” Lavrov said after the talks ended in Sochi. 

Putin hinted at the same point, announcing  during his press conference with Erdogan: “Syria must be liberated from illegal foreign military presence. We believe that the only way to achieve strong and long-lasting stability in Syria is to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country. This is our principled position, and we have discussed it with the President of Turkey. It is important that our Turkish partners share this approach. The Turks and the Syrians will have to protect peace on the border together, which would be impossible without mutually respectful cooperation between the two countries. (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019
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By Gary Busch, London*
  @bears_with

The roots of the Syrian Civil War start with conflicts over who controls Syria’s energy supplies. The war continues, especially in the Kurdish areas of the north, in a fight over water which has been growing desperately scarcer for everybody – Syrians, Kurds, Turks, Iraqis.

Achieving a final conclusion to the war will depend on those fighting it to negotiate  arrangements for the distribution of Syrian energy supplies, onshore and offshore, and ensuring adequate supplies of water in a continuously dehydrating climate. Until now, taking oil and water by force has been much the preferred option. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, October 21st, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is hoping that his meeting with President Vladimir Putin, scheduled for next Tuesday in Sochi, will give him the same battlefield advantages on Syrian territory which Putin conceded in their Idlib Agreement of last September. By fixing the Putin negotiation at the limit of the 5-day agreement Erdogan negotiated yesterday with US officials in Ankara, the Turkish aim is to extend the Turkish military occupation of northeastern Syria from the frontier to Highway M4, and present Putin with a fait accompli – a Turkish invasion of Syria, followed by the surrender of the Kurdish forces and of the Syrian Army, without a serious fight.

To achieve this between now and then, the US and the Turks are hoping for a Russian military retreat from the battlefield, and the abandonment of Russian protection, in the air and on the ground, of the Syrian Army’s advance to recover sovereignty for the government in Damascus. The Turkish invasion, the US has now agreed, is a NATO operation under the treaty’s collective defence Article 5;  this implies the threat of US reprisals if the Turkish advance is fought by Kurdish, Syrian and Russian forces.

“This is an incredible outcome,” President Donald Trump has declared. “We got everything we ever could have dreamed of.” Trump thinks he has Putin’s capitulation.

On paper he has already. On the battlefield he hasn’t, yet. If Putin concedes next Tuesday, then it is clear this is exactly what Putin meant when he told an Arabic-language media interview last  Monday, “we – Turkey, Iran, and Russia – work hard, shoulder to shoulder, to achieve positive results. However, it would have been impossible without support from Saudi Arabia, and we all understand that.” In point of fact, no one in the Arab world, nor in the Russian Foreign Ministry and General Staff, understands that all. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, October 17th, 2019
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Authoritarianism in the former Soviet Union is John Heathershaw’s métier.

Heathershaw is a professor at the University of Exeter where he specializes in studying and teaching “conflict, security and development in authoritarian political environments, especially in post-Soviet Central Asia.”  Recently, he took exception to my critical reviews of books on Russia by fellow British academics – one  by Mark Galeotti, and others by Oliver Bullough, Elisabeth Schimpfossl,  and Robert Service.  He wrote to me to say so, recognizing my “journalistic work” and adding: “I’m not interested in hatchet jobs or conspiracy theories regarding people doing perfectly good research.” This is the record of what happened when the journalist asked the professor for his evidence. (more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, October 16th, 2019
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