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 old oligarchs, and several new aspirants, have a new playground in the Russian transportation sector, where their profits are guaranteed by the state budget. Carrying cargo from mine and wellhead to plant and port, and back again from port to market, is already profitable in conventional terms, and so the […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, January 17th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow Last month Oleg Deripaska authorized a Washington lobbyist he employs to submit to the US Department of Justice the claim that Deripaska meets with American “businesspeople to assess economic development in the United States in connection with his role as an economic advisor to the President of the Russian Federation.” The […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, January 17th, 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 A donation of $2,500 to the “Obama Victory Fund”, the US president’s election campaign fund, was made on October 12, 2012, by an American lobbyist engaged by Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov. This is according to a filing last month by the US agent acting for Lavrov named Adam Waldman. He […]

by John Helmer - Monday, January 14th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow “I can promise to say nothing that is untrue”, wrote Giuseppe di Lampedusa, the Sicilian prince, the Italian writer, when introducing a chapter of his brief memoirs. “But I shall not want to say all; and I reserve the right to lie by omission. Unless I change my mind.” If somebody […]

by John Helmer - Saturday, December 29th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Sergei Stepashin (right) was the prime minister of Russia for three months before Vladimir Putin (left) was appointed to the job in August 1999. Before that, Stepashin was the head of the Federal Security Service, Minister of Justice, and Minister of Interior. He also has a doctorate; a professor’s rank in […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, December 27th, 2012
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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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By John Helmer, Moscow A year is a long time in Russian politics, and Vladimir Putin isn’t the same man he was a year ago. Then — on July 15, 2011 — he visited Magnitogorsk, presided at the official commissioning of the new automotive steel production line known as Mill-2000, and spent three hours answering […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, July 17th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow If wine were an investment, like company shares, gold, or real estate, then you would expect the Russian oligarchs to put their hands into this particular till. But hobby vineyards and French chateaux aside, there haven’t been many. Still, Vadim Varshavsky’s Croizet cognac (Charente) has not proved to be as ill-fated […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, June 28th, 2012
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