By John Helmer, Moscow The UK Court of Appeal yesterday cut short Russian tanker company Sovcomflot’s 7-year lawsuit, ruling that two earlier High Court judgements exonerating the conduct of former chief executive of Sovcomflot, Dmitry Skarga, must stand. The dismissal by the High Court of most of Sovcomflot’s claims against former chartering partner, Yury Nikitin, […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, March 7th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow New records of the Myre Seadiver’s ill-fated stay at Lagos, Nigeria, have been made available, showing the Lagos port authorities and the Nigerian Navy gave permission for the Russian security vessel to enter the port with a stock of small arms, and that these remained on board at an anchorage in […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 28th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Russian government relations with Nigeria have collapsed after negotiations have failed to free from five months of detention the Russian fleet tender vessel, Myre Seadiver, and its 15-man Russian crew. They have been charged with arms smuggling. The case is now viewed in Moscow as a repeat of the African Pride […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander — the English proverb is not about birds or cooking, but about equal treatment. When it comes to operating tanker fleets in and out of Russia’s ports, foreign-owned vessels have been enjoying equality of access for some time. That may be […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 21st, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Ziyavudin Magomedov’s hold on the ports of Novorossiysk and Primorsk, and the oil which flows into and out of them, deteriorated suddenly and publicly this week. This has triggered new concern in The Netherlands that Magomedov’s Summa Group will be unable to find the money to break ground, as scheduled next […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 19th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Long after the great siege generals – Alexander, Napoleon – enunciated the principle of concentrating fire against the weakest points of an enemy’s walls – the Red Army devised the application combining the most explosives for the cheapest outlay in a saturation pattern which didn’t need to be accurate. It was […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 11th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow You don’t have to be a commercial rival of Ziyavudin Magomedov to notice that the billion-dollar business ventures he promises to deliver often fail to materialize. There was his claim, for example, that with his control stake of the United Grain Company (OZK is the Russian acronym), he intended to bid […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 29th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow At your peril, the one thing you must never say to a ranking Israeli intelligence officer, even one in mufti or retirement, is that he is suffering from a superiority complex. For the clinical symptoms of the affliction include conceptual deafness, ideological blindness. These stem from the frontal-lobe idea that the […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, January 20th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow The Russian tactic of giving an adversary an exit through which to escape was coined by Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov (left) during the war against Napoleon. He called it the “pont d’or” (golden bridge). The meaning was that Napoleon and his army should be allowed to retreat out of Russia, harassed, starved, […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 15th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Along the eastern Mediterranean shore, between Tyre, Lebanon, and Tartous, Syria, it’s 191 kilometres as the crow flies – make that as the drone flies. Tyre was the site of one of the great tests of military technology, tactics, and nerve when the Greek, Alexander the Great, besieged the then Phoenician […]

by John Helmer - Friday, December 21st, 2012
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