By John Helmer, Moscow A man loses his life while he’s on a mission for one or two countries’ secret services in their attempt to change the regime of a third country. It’s a life or death risk he’s running but he calculates he’s well protected.  He miscalculates; the outcome is fatal. The third country’s […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 30th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Oleg Deripaska has been in love, tough love, with the High Court in London for years. That’s to say, he regards the court as one of his personal appendages with which to pummel his rivals into doing what he demands.   Since 2005 the court record shows Deripaska has been a principal, […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 28th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow “I consider myself a person from here” Yuri Slezkine, a US historian, told a Russian interviewer  in May.  “I feel at home in the elements of the Russian language and within the Russian cultural tradition. I live and work in America, but it is incredibly important to me that my local […]

by Editor - Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow For as long as President Vladimir Putin (lead image, right) intends to remain president, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (left) intends to remain his successor in waiting. He made this visibly obvious  in an appearance (lead image)  in Brussels last Thursday and Friday, though it’s not yet officially so. The signal the […]

by Editor - Sunday, October 21st, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow By the standards our police, prosecutors, and judges are required to follow, the cases presented so far by the British Government in the Skripal poisoning and the Dutch Government in the Malaysia Airlines MH17 shoot-down fall short by a long way. Worse than unprovable to the criminal standard of beyond reasonable […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 18th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Kremlin through Dmitry Peskov, the President’s spokesman, has endorsed Alexei Kudrin’s call for changing Russia’s foreign and defence policy to save the country from American sanctions. “We can perhaps agree with the point of view [of Kudrin],” Peskov said, “   except [that the reason] is not the foreign policy of […]

by Editor - Monday, October 15th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Anglo-American candidate to be President of Russia, replacing Vladimir Putin, reprivatizing Russia’s resource assets, and emasculating the country’s defences, has made a fresh pitch. Alexei Kudrin, sacked as Finance Minister,  demoted as presidential economic adviser, then appointed  Chairman of the Accounting Chamber five months ago,  gave a speech to the […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 11th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Did the Russian espionage operation at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in The Hague last April succeed before the Dutch counter-intelligence agents stopped it and caught the Russian agents?  Did the report of an OPCW laboratory investigation of the Skripal poisoning, released publicly in Moscow the day […]

by Editor - Monday, October 8th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow Until mid-April, almost six months ago, the performances of the British, Dutch, Ukrainian and American intelligence agencies in producing evidence to explain the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17 and the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury were about equal in fabrication quality and standard of proof; equally poor. The […]

by Editor - Friday, October 5th, 2018
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By John Helmer. Moscow Alisher Usmanov (lead image, left) has announced that the Russian oligarchs have almost died out. Not counting himself, he claimed in a television interview on the weekend there is only one oligarch left. “I think we have one passenger in this car, it is already empty, and he sits alone — […]

by Editor - Thursday, October 4th, 2018
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