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  • Monthly Review Essays

About John Helmer

John Helmer is the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. He first set up his bureau in 1989, making him today the doyen of the foreign press corps in Russia.
  • 1

    “Congratulations to everyone” in rope-a-dope strategy, the bell also sounds for rest periods

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on June 23, 2025 (more by Dances with Bears)

    According to the Unified Rules of Boxing issued by the U.S. Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports, when the bell sounds for the end of each round, there is a “rest period” before the boxers resume their fight, or one retires too hurt to continue.

  • rope-a-dope warfighting

    In rope-a-dope war fighting strategy, nothing quite succeeds like failure

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on June 22, 2025 (more by Dances with Bears)

    According to General Daniel Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. has knocked out Iran’s nuclear enrichment and nuclear weapon preparation plants with “extremely severe destruction”; “completely and totally”, according to President Donald Trump.

  • 1

    How to say in Russian happy birthday Donald, happy U.S. Army and Flag Day

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on June 15, 2025 (more by Dances with Bears)

    Putin is much too quick not to recognize that President Donald Trump is both a fraudster and an enemy.

  • tell-and-consequences

    Tell-and-consequences is not a war game, neither is turn-the-other-cheek

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on June 8, 2025 (more by Dances with Bears)

    The game of tell-and-consequences begins with a prompt.

  • US/Russia

    The oligarchs’ picnic–what’s on the menu when Trump’s oligarchs negotiate with Putin’s oligarchs

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on January 23, 2025 (more by Dances with Bears)

    Today we are at roughly the same point, but oligarchs think in commercial terms, not social or ethical ones. For the oligarchs, the point on both sides is that the sanctions war over the past three years has created the largest gap between true asset value and trade value which exists in the global market today–this is the gap between the pre-war bankable value of Russian commodities, resources, and corporate assets and their discounted price under sanctions.

  • TONY'S DARK SECRET

    Yulia Skripal reveals the biggest secret of all at Novichok show trial-The attack was a British operation, not a Russian one

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on November 16, 2024 (more by Dances with Bears)

    Yulia Skripal communicated from her bedside at Salisbury District Hospital on March 8, 2018, four days after she and her father Sergei Skripal collapsed from a poison attack, that the attacker used a spray; and that the attack took place when she and her father were eating at a restaurant just minutes before their collapse on a bench outside.

  • Sergei and Yulia Skripal

    Novichok show trial suffers sudden death shot from doctor’s testimony that government officials sedated the Skripals to stop them talking

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on November 1, 2024 (more by Dances with Bears)

    The British Government was exposed in the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry this week as keeping Sergei and Yulia Skripal unconscious to silence them.

  • Pokrovsk

    The war came to Pokrovsk

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on October 4, 2024 (more by Dances with Bears)

    Established as a minor Russian rail junction in 1880, it was badly damaged by the Italians and Germans who captured the city between 1941 and 1943, killing more than 8,000 Red Army defenders, 5,000 residents, and all the Jews.

  • German Leopard 2A6 burning internally after being hit by Russian fire near Avdeyevka in November 2023.

    The good Germans are blowing smoke

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on March 3, 2024 (more by Dances with Bears)

    There is a fraction of the Germans who, when speaking or writing in public, consider themselves the good Germans. Good Germans are to Germany as propaganda is to truth—negligibly fractional; sometimes truth-telling; always irrelevant to the outcome of the wars which Germany wages.

  • RUNNING THE RED GAUNTLET

    Running the Red Gauntlet–Russia is negotiating with the Houthis for Red Sea passage of oil cargoes defying U.S./EU sanction

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on December 20, 2023 (more by Dances with Bears)

    Russia is negotiating with the Houthis of Yemen to protect Russian oil cargoes moving through the Red Sea for delivery to India and China, the principal destinations of Russian oil currently traversing the waterway, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden.

  • PRIGOZHIN’S THREE STRIKES

    Prigozhin’s three strikes–Khodorkovsky business, Berozovsky politics, the last Africa trip

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on September 5, 2023 (more by Dances with Bears)

    On March 5, in Bangui, Central African Republic (CAR), there was a fire-bombing of a French–owned brewery which destroyed 50,000 bottles of beer.

  • Silence of the Lambs: How the Russian Communists have responded to the Wagner mutiny and Prigozhin’s Empire

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on July 5, 2023 by John Helmer (more by Dances with Bears)

    The calls have begun in Mosco, for keeping intact Yevgeny Prigozhin’s conglomerate of military budget contractors. The reason argued is that they have established themselves so strategically in the logistics of the military services that they cannot be purged without doing greater damage than Prigozhin himself has caused. In short, a Russian oligarch who knows too much, with too many mouths to feed, too many pockets to fill, and so too big to fail.

  • TOSSING RICE AT THE MARRIAGE OF THE OLIGARCHS WITH THE STATE

    Russia: Tossing rice at the marriage of the oligarchs with the State

    Originally published: Dances with Bears (more by Dances with Bears)

    Everyone who has ever heard rice go snap, crackle, and pop! knows that eating the grain is good for your energy.

  • 2800

    Blinken concedes war is lost-offers Kremlin Ukrainian demilitarization; Crimea, Donbas, Zaporozhye; and restriction of new tanks to Western Ukraine if there is no Russian offensive

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on January 25, 2023 (more by Dances with Bears)

    David Ignatius (lead image, left) has been a career-long mouthpiece for the U.S. State Department. He has just been called in by the current Secretary of State Antony Blinken (right) to convey an urgent new message to President Vladimir Putin, the Security Council, and the General Staff in Moscow.

  • ALEXEI KUDRIN STARTS HIS RUN TO SUCCEED PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN

    Alexei Kudrin starts his run to succeed President Vladimir Putin

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on November 30, 2022 (more by Dances with Bears)

    There were only two ways for Alexei Kudrin to become the president of Russia that he and the U.S. government have always wanted.

  • Kurilla was joined on the USS West Virginia by Vice Admiral Brad Cooper.

    The U.S. signals readiness to launch nuclear strike against Russia

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on October 24, 2022 (more by Dances with Bears)

    U.S. Navy announced that “General Michael ‘Erik’ Kurilla, commander of CENTCOM, conducted a visit aboard the USS West Virginia, a U.S. Navy Ohio-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine at an undisclosed location at sea in international waters in the Arabian Sea. Kurilla was joined on the USS West Virginia by Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet and NAVCENT.”

  • THE UKRAINIAN M.O. FOR THE CRIMEAN BRIDGE ATTACK – THIS IS HOW THE OPERATION WORKED TO THE POINT OF DETONATION

    The Ukrainian m.o. for the Crimean Bridge attack-this is how the operation worked to the point of detonation

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on October 13, 2022 (more by Dances with Bears)

    Two detailed reports appeared in Moscow describing precisely how the attack on the Crimean Bridge on October 8 was organised and carried out.

  • The only Russian leader in a thousand years who was a genuine gardener and who allowed himself to be recorded with a shovel in his hand was Joseph Stalin (lead image, mid-1930s).

    Lemons, mimosas, and Stalin’s shovel

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on September 25, 2022 (more by Dances with Bears)

    The only Russian leader in a thousand years who was a genuine gardener and who allowed himself to be recorded with a shovel in his hand was Joseph Stalin (lead image, mid-1930s). Compared to Stalin, the honouring of the new British king Charles III as a gardener pales into imitativeness and pretension.

  • International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

    International Atomic Energy agency takes Ukraine side in war in September 15 vote, making UN Secretary-General Guterres either a liar or a fool

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on September 16, 2022 (more by Dances with Bears)

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) decided this week to take the side of Ukraine in the current war; blame Russia for the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP); and issue a demand for Russia to surrender the plant to the Kiev regime “to regain full control over all nuclear facilities within Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, including the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant.”

  • NATIONAL CHAMPION OR NATIONAL CHUMP – OLEG DERIPASKA AND VLADIMIR POTANIN TRY THE RUSAL-NORILSK NICKEL MERGER

    National champion or National chump-Oleg Deripaska and Vladimir Potanin try the Rusal-Norilsk nickel merger

    Originally published: Dances with Bears on July 10, 2022 (more by Dances with Bears)

    In wars like the present one, politics on the home front cannot be permitted to give aid and comfort to the enemy. In the U.S. and NATO campaign, the Russian oligarchs and their businesses are targets and also weapons of the plan for regime change in the Kremlin.

  • 1
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