By John Helmer, Moscow Mikhail Abyzov (centre) is the man in charge of keeping the Russian government transparent, accountable and so far as the name of his ministerial commission can be stretched through 235 government press releases since his appointment in May 2012, open. But the Minister for Open Government has a secret he keeps […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, September 11th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow It’s in the nature of arbitrage transactions that if you are buying an asset cheap, you try to avoid the risk of failing to find someone to buy dear. Naturally, noone really enjoys gambling if the risk can be avoided. The knack of Russian arbitrage is to cover that risk by […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, July 31st, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow When it comes to Trojan horses, who better than the Government of Greece to judge. The Trojan Horse that’s meant is Leonid Lebedev (lead image), the three-term, 12-year Federation Council senator representing the Republic of Chuvashia. Lebedev claims to be a billionaire with control of a conglomerate called Sintez. Its cash […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, July 13th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow If the programme of US sanctions cuts Russian military industries off from imports from the Ukraine, the new costs imposed on the Russian side may turn out to be less than the price of the sacrifice on the Ukrainian side. According to Russian military sources, that’s because, starting last year the […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, May 18th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow When Alexander Shokhin was a junior official in the international economic department of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the 1980s, it was plain he was short-sighted. That was because of the glasses he wore – the old Soviet type, super-thick. He’s come a long way since then, and so […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, May 7th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow On Thursday President Vladimir Putin described NATO missile batteries aimed at Russia’s Black Sea coastline as threatening the nuclear defences of southwestern Russia. It was the first time the president or Russian defence officials have put Crimea into Russian strategic survival doctrine. US Navy deployment in the Black Sea of ships […]

by John Helmer - Monday, April 21st, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow A year ago the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reported that through the statistics collected by its 60 associated central banks, total bank lending to Russia had jumped by $25 billion in the January quarter. That was the largest quarterly increase of Russian lending and borrowing in BIS records. It was […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow President Barack Obama issued an order yesterday imposing sanctions against seven Russians whom he and his government blame for the crisis in Ukraine. At the bottom of the Obama list at Number 7 is State Duma Deputy Yelena Mizulina (left), chairman of the Committee on Family, Women and Children Affairs. She […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, March 18th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow A Russian declaration of war and the despatch of troops to secure the Crimea would be very serious things, if they materialized. The Financial Times reporter, Kathrin Hille (image), is the only person in the entire world who claims to have been told by “a senior government official”: “If Ukraine breaks […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, February 25th, 2014
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By John Helmer, Moscow A reporter for the New York Times has scooped the global press in Sochi. Named David Herszenhorn, the newspaper’s specialist on the New York City borough of Queens, the reporter has uncovered a plot to kill a group of stray dogs – by poison darts causing suffocation — in front of […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, February 6th, 2014
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