By John Helmer in Moscow In Russia it is traditional for the tsar to invite the culpable to assist him in finding and punishing the culprits; or to bargain for scapegoats. On Thursday last, October 15, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told the regular weekly session of government ministers that he has ordered the Prosecutor General […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
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by John Helmer - Monday, October 19th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Vanity corrupts; pathological vanity corrupts pathologically. That’s when you cannot believe that others are capable of disbelieving you. An American president who is at that stage will contrive anything, including war, for his personal benefit. For Obama to feel, as he said, “deeply humbled” when awakened by the Nobel Peace […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, October 11th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow It took several shots over a thousand years before people who scribble for a living could get the jingle about their business quite right. Euripides tried it with: “The tongue is mightier than the blade”. To the modern ear that sounds a little on the sado-erotic side. Shakespeare had the […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, was last elected in December 2007. The outcome was the following distribution of seats: United Russia, 315; Communist Party, 57; Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, 40; and Fair Russia, 38. Vadim Varshavsky, 49, was elected to the Duma in 2005 […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
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  Marshal Sergei Fyodorovich Akhromeyev   “Everything I have worked for throughout my life is being destroyed.”   — August 24, 1991

by John Helmer - Monday, August 24th, 2009
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1. Recently, President Medvedev urged Russian oligarchs to pay their “moral debt”? What does this mean in concrete terms? Moral debt in Russia is a case of the three monkeys who see, hear, and speak no evil. In theory, the Russian President means that men who seized most of Russia’s natural resource wealth more than […]

by John Helmer - Monday, March 30th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow One word explains why the United States, NATO and the European Union have obliged themselves to sit on their hands, while Russia’s defends its citizens, and national interest in the Caucasus, and liberates Georgians from the folly of their unpopular president, Mikheil Saakashvili — Kosovo. Eight hundred years of Caucasian […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, August 10th, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow Putin’s endorsement of Medvedev, and vice versa, leaves mining policy issues up in the air. President Vladimir Putin did his best to make the selection of Dmitry Medvedev, 42, his former chief of staff and St. Petersburg lawyer, as natural an endorsement as he could of the capabilities of a […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 12th, 2007
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It was the 19th century English poet William Wordsworth who once warned that “in modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most; it is the honest man who doesn’t know what he is doing.” Since self-proclaimed presidential candidate Sergei Glazyev isn’t a crook, and he sues television broadcasters for moral […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 12th, 2007
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