By John Helmer, Moscow

There are many Russian reasons why no Russian, man or woman, has trusted Oleg Deripaska (lead picture, on the wall), control shareholder and chief executive of the state aluminium monopoly Rusal (Russian Aluminium), for more than a few months at a time. The reasons have varied from business to business, contract to contract, individual to individual.  But now that the US Treasury has put Deripaska and Rusal out of business, one week before the Russian General Staff demonstrated that it can put the air forces of the US out of the attack business, the plan for the future of Rusal is simple.

There are six points under discussion in the Kremlin.  President Vladimir Putin must decide and  announce his running orders; appoint a Russian military officer with at least one tour under fire in Syria  to implement the orders;  and retire Deripaska from command of anything of state  importance.  

(more…)

by Editor - Sunday, April 15th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

US Government economic sanctions have a hundred-year long history in US statutes and court cases, starting in 1917 when the US was at war with Germany. Trading with the Enemy Act was what the first statute was called.   It was clear then who the enemy was, and there was a shooting war in the Atlantic and in Europe to prove it.

Many US wars later, most of them for reasons which turned out to be lies, US Government sanctions have been endorsed by the American courts as a defence against an attacker whose method always included the use of force. But not now.

On Friday April 6, the US Treasury, headed by by Steven Mnuchin (lead image, centre), introduced a new type of economic sanction; read the official announcement.  For the first time, the individuals and companies targeted have no record for using force, and there is no evidence of their intention to use it. Instead, they are accused, and by the new sanctions punished, for things which American citizens have the constitutional right to exercise – the freedom of association and the freedom of expression.

The Russian targets of the new sanctions, announced Mnuchin, are proscribed for the full range of economic sanctions because of their association with the Russian government, and because they are Russians doing business in Russia. “The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” Mnuchin said, stamping his foot where Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and C. Wright Mills have famously trod before.  “The Russian government engages in a range of malign activity around the globe”. Ergo, a Russian businessman associating with the Russian government and growing rich is a threat to the equitable distribution of income and capital in Russia; ergo, he is a threat to the security of the United States. Never before has Russian capitalism been declared an enemy of American socialism, and forbidden to borrow, lend, own or trade with Americans or the US dollar. (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, April 12th, 2018
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Right – Mayor of Moscow Sergei Sobyanin at the Security Council meeting on April 6; on his right,  General Valery Gerasimov,  Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Defence Minister. Official Kremlin publication: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57213

Right – Sobyanin at the Easter service at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral on April 8; on his right. President Vladimir Putin. Official Kremlin publication: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/57221

By John Helmer, Moscow

Father Politics, like Mother Nature, abhors a vacuum.

And so it was, even before the US Treasury announced its newest sanctions against Russian individuals and their companies for “malign activity around the globe”, that President-elect Vladimir Putin was preparing a successor cabinet of ministers on the principle that they would be organized as a headquarters staff for fighting a war on all fronts, without the option of negotiating terms with the enemy.

The impact of the US sanctions, along with the campaign of the British Government in the Skripal affair, and the Syrian front action escalating since the weekend, have reinforced what had already been decided in the Kremlin.  The new government is to be a war cabinet. In Russian parlance, a Stavka. (more…)

by Editor - Monday, April 9th, 2018
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Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/

Source: http://www.mid.ru/

By John Helmer, Moscow

by Editor - Monday, April 9th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Salisbury Hospital’s chief administrator and chief doctor refuse to say they are holding consent forms signed by Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal. Without those forms, and proof the hospital has obtained them from the Skripals since they regained consciousness last week, the hospital is making claims about their privacy which are improper, according to the practice rules of the British National Health Service, and unlawful violations of their human rights, according to British and European law. (more…)

by Editor - Sunday, April 8th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Empires are just like everything else going down the toilet. Bits always stick on the porcelain which require more flushing.  Embarrassing bits.  

Now in its fifth week since the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury on March 4, the bits that cannot be flushed away are producing an odour whose obviousness is embarrassing for  Salisbury Hospital and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

The hospital is treating the Skripals for their medical welfare and is required by hospital policy and  UK law to be accountable to their next of kin. Their rights of access to and from the hospital are also required by  European Human Rights Convention.  The evidence now accumulating is that the hospital is detaining and isolating the Skripals against their will, preventing contact with their family. Requested to explain this and identify her legal authority, the response of the hospital’s chief executive, Cara Charles-Barks, is to stonewall.

The OPCW, comprising 192 states which have signed, ratified and enacted the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC),  is governed by a 41-member Executive Council, and administered by a Secretary-General and a staff based in The Hague. They represent the management arm of the Convention to ensure that everyone follows its provisions.  But in acting on the Skripal case, the OPCW is voting in secret and  violating the articles of the Convention itself. The OPCW’s spokesman, an American named Deepti Choubey, refuses to reply to questions claiming the right of confidentiality according to the Convention and the OPCW’s policy. When asked to identify which provisions of the Convention apply, and what is the text of the OPCW policy on confidentiality, Choubey’s response is to stonewall.  (more…)

by Editor - Thursday, April 5th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In just three months’ time, on July 1, all licensed Moscow taxis will have to be painted yellow. The kaleidoscope of taxi colours which followed the end of the Soviet Union and the rise of entrepreneur cabbies and imported western cars ends when the last five-year licenses for multi-coloured taxis expire. 

Yellow is not the only uniformity to be achieved by the city transport administration under Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, as the largest of the city cab companies, ASAP, has gone bankrupt, and its owner has disappeared in the direction of the island haven of the Seychelles. There,  taxis come in many colours. If everything goes according to the Sobyanin plan most Moscow taxi drivers believe the mayor has agreed to, there will soon be a near-monopoly of the city’s taxis by the Yandex group controlled by Arkady Volozh.  (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, April 3rd, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The British public telephone is two years short of a century old. The Salisbury Hospital has dismantled the outdoor models because it is now possible for patients  to receive and make telephone calls from their bedside. The hospital has contracted with a company called Hospedia to provide patients with personal access to telephones (television, internet, games too). The patients must pay.

The business of overcharging them for incoming and outgoing calls was such a corrupt scandal, Hospedia’s predecessor company went bankrupt. The Royal Bank of Scotland took over the assets, and then went even more corruptly bankrupt itself.  So the bank sold the hospital telephone business to Marlin Equity Partners. That company presently controls most British hospital patient telephones; it is an American group specializing in investment in signal and cyber operations of every sort. It is based in Los Angeles and London.

If you are Yulia Skripal, you are likely to want to use Salisbury Hospital’s Hospedia telephone system to call home in Moscow. There she has a family consisting of a grandmother and a cousin; an uncle lives in St. Petersburg and another cousin in Primorye.  All of them have been identified by name and address in the Russian press. Yulia Skripal also has a fiancé with whom she was living, and about whom considerable detail of his marital intentions, occupation, mother, father, home address and black Land Rover have also been published. Their 90-second telephone call before Yulia took off on her fateful Aeroflot flight to London on March 3 has been published.  So have details of her father Sergei’s request that she bring him packages of kasha and bay leaf in her luggage.   Even  the address of the pet hotel where Yulia Skripal’s dog Noir is staying at Rb800 per day is reported in the free Russian press.  

Two Moscow reporters have specialized in this investigation – Lev Speransky and Yekaterina Sveshnikova. They have also published excerpts from the Skripal family photo album.   Their evidence is that Yulia Skripal is human enough to want to call home.

However, she cannot do so. Salisbury Hospital officials, who have confirmed her capacity to listen and speak by telephone, will not say why. (more…)

by Editor - Sunday, April 1st, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Aman Tuleyev (second image, centre) was re-appointed by President Vladimir Putin (lead images, left) to his fifth term as governor of Kemerovo region on April 16, 2015.   No governor of a Russian province has served for twenty-one years with such a display of confidence from the President.

For this period Tuleyev has been responsible for the corrupt culture of the region; everyone in Kemorovo knows it. On Tuesday in Kemorovo city Putin was told so by a local resident. For the eleven-year file on Tuleyev’s crimes, stories of those whom he has falsely accused, as well as reports on those he has enriched in consequence, open the archive.   (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, March 27th, 2018
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Sergei Skripal, the self-employed entrepeneur, former Russian military explosives specialist and British espionage agent, is “in hospital under heavy sedation,” according to a High Court judgement issued last week in London.   He is “unconscious” but appears not to be on life-support machinery. A Salisbury Hospital doctor testifed in court that Skripal and his daughter Yulia are “unable to communicate in any way” and  “in a physically stable condition which is not expected to change in the immediate or near future.” According to the court, “medical tests indicate that their mental capacity might be compromised to an unknown and so far unascertained degree.” The implication is that they are comatose.

The High Court reported evidence from the doctor treating the Skripals that they have suffered  “injury by a nerve agent” The court also accepted evidence from a government chemical and biological analyst at the Porton Down Laboratory that their injury had been caused by  “exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent.”

Justice David Williams, who presided in court and issued the March 22 ruling, did not identify a source or origin of this nerve agent. The judge also did not say nor did he rule that what happened to the Skripals was a crime.

The only official Russian explanation of what has happened came from Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. He said on March 23 there had been an “accident”; for Peskov’s reference to an accident, click to read. 

Skripal and his daughter were  represented in court last week by a London lawyer named Vikram Sachdeva QC. He  refuses to answer questions about his role or his clients.  His appointment by the British authorities does not establish his independence; according to last week’s court record, he “supported much that Mr [James] Eadie [lawyer representing the British Government]  submitted.” Sachdeva’s case record shows he has been involved in cases of unconscious people in the past, but Sachdeva appears to take the side of the authorities. “A safe pair of hands [for the government]”, a source familiar with Sachdeva’s record says.

The court record also reveals that Sachdeva refuses to have any contact with his client’s family in Russia or their business associates and contacts there. He testified in court that it is “not…practicable or appropriate to seek the views of others who might be interested in the welfare of Mr Skripal.” The judge acknowledged evidence in court that the Skripals “appear to have some relatives in Russia”, but added: “I accept that it is neither practicable nor appropriate in the special context of this case to consult with any relatives of Mr Skripal.”

Sachdeva’s refusal to open contacts with the Russian family and associates of Sergei Skripal to investigate the possibility that his injury was self-inflicted by accident, has triggered questioning by London and Moscow lawyers.  These sources do not doubt that the British and Russian intelligence and security services  have now gathered considerable evidence of Skripal’s activities before the March 4 incident, and of the contacts Yulia Skripal had with her father’s associates in Moscow before she flew to England on March 3. If no crime was committed, if an accident happened, then the sources point out that the evidence of the nerve agent in the Skripals’ blood amounts to only a small fraction of the evidence the British and Russian governments already hold. The lawyers also say this  is circumstantial, not direct and determinative evidence. (more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, March 27th, 2018
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