By John Helmer in Moscow Runaway inflation and unemployment rates are the conventional killers of campaigns for reelection in the democracies, such as the US and the UK. But in the autocracies, the rising price of bread (or rice), leading to hoarding, usually does the trick.

by John Helmer - Friday, September 3rd, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow Gennady Onishchenko (picture) would flog a dead horse to protect domestic product market share against foreign imports, and that’s as good as protecting Russian consumer health, even better perhaps. Onishchenko saved Russians from the perils of Belarus milk last June and then in January he rescued the state from American […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 1st, 2010
No Comments »

by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow President Dmitry Medvedev is lying when he claims that his modernization slogan, under which he is running for re-appointment by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, means free and fair competition; security for foreign investment; and private ownership in place of state control. I mean lying, as in lying on the fakir’s […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow It’s tough being the greatest legal reformer ever to occupy the Kremlin because none of the tsars who preceded Dmitry Medvedev had a university degree in jurisprudence. Mikhail Gorbachev might be considered a close runner, because he received his law degree from Moscow State University in 1955. But then Medvedev […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, June 17th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow The Russian state bailout bank, VEB, chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has defended the pricing of two Arctic ice-class, Panamax sized tankers ordered by Sovcomflot, which analysts and brokers have criticized as substantially above market price.

by John Helmer - Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow The last of the titans who have dominated Alrosa, Russia’s diamond monopoly, since its founding in 1993 has handed in his resignation, and had it accepted by the Kremlin. Vyacheslav Shtirov (also spelled Shtyrov, right image) has left for “personal reasons”, announced an aide to President Dmitri Medvedev. The reasons […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, June 1st, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow This sequence of picture-frames was taken by cameramen of RenTV, a Moscow television channel, of a vote on first-reading legislation by the State Duma, the initiating chamber for federal laws in Russia, on May 19.

by John Helmer - Monday, May 31st, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow On April 12 NATO launched four large-scale war games in northern Europe. A report by Rick Rozoff for the Media Monitors Network, “Relentless Global Drive: NATO on Six Continents in Seven Days”, published on April 22, documented the official announcements from several US and NATO command sources, and the British […]

by John Helmer - Friday, May 7th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow The Lithuanians tried it more than a decade ago. The Belarussians are trying it again – noone in Moscow believes it can be done. In fact, the Russians say it’s childish to try. When the Russian noose goes round your neck, they say, you either beg forgiveness, or you choke […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, May 5th, 2010
No Comments »