By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The Black Sea is a small body of water by international sea standards. It is so small that when the navies of the shore states go to war, the battles tend to be brief, hit-and-run affairs, like the skirmishes between the Romanians, Germans and Soviets in 1941-42, and between the […]

by Editor - Thursday, June 15th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There’s an old Russian adage about swallowing too much and trying to talk at the same time – if  you don’t want to die of gastroenteritis, keep your mouth shut.  This isn’t an option for  understanding the  past week of the war, and preparing for the next. Bear in mind […]

by Editor - Saturday, June 10th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The longest lasting of the false-flag operations conducted against Russia since the Special Military Operation started in February 2022 has been flying the flag of the United Nations (UN). The chief flag-bearer has been the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, a Portuguese (lead image, left); he has manipulated, plotted, […]

by Editor - Monday, June 5th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with In a month it will be three hundred and fourteen years precisely since the Swedes lost their king, their generals, their soldiers, and their empire when Tsar Peter the Great and the Russian army defeated them at the Battle of Poltava (lead image) . That battle of July 8, 1709, […]

by Editor - Sunday, June 4th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The last time the Norwegians whipped themselves into a frenzy of warmaking race hatred, their minister president was Vidkun Quisling (lead image, left).   An exceptionally intelligent young military officer, he became the Norwegian General Staff’s expert on Russia at the time of the Russian Revolution. He then was posted […]

by Editor - Thursday, June 1st, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with Existentially speaking — which means whether to live and let live, to do or die — how far from a mortal enemy is far enough? In between the one and the other outcome, is there anything but a no man’s land?   Carthago delenda est – “Carthage must be destroyed” […]

by Editor - Wednesday, May 31st, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with The man in the frame is General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. There are no insignia on his jacket, zipped tight to his chin. His torso and legs are concealed beneath the desk which also accommodates a computer screen without keyboard or mouse; and a pen held […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 28th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with “He was not a nihilist for nothing!” This is one of the funniest, and at the same time one of the saddest lines, written by Ivan Turgenev in Fathers and Sons, the novel of his which preserves its contemporaneity through the Russian revolutions better than any other classic of Russian […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 28th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with This is a primer on the way the wind has been blowing since the Ukrainian ammunition  stockpile was blown up at Khmelnitsky in the early hours of May 13. Radiation measurements in the western Ukrainian city appear to have risen sharply on May 13 and 14, indicating that British-supplied depleted […]

by Editor - Monday, May 22nd, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow   @bears_with There is a grave risk that in three weeks’ time US and NATO forces will attempt direct combat against Russia. The operational plan is to strike from Romanian airspace in the south and the Baltic states in the north, in camouflage of the NATO exercise called “Air Defender 23”,  and […]

by Editor - Sunday, May 21st, 2023
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