by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The opposite of comeuppance ought to be comedownance.  That’s when, instead of a negative outcome which the perpetrator has deserved, the outcome is positive but not what the perpetrator had planned or anticipated.

This is now happening to Oleg Deripaska’s (lead image, left) aluminium monopoly Rusal, according to an announcement this week by the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, Viktor Yevtukhov (right).   “We have high-quality aluminium,” he said reporters at an industry conference. “And I do not think that the refusal of America and England to buy our aluminium, where we did not supply so much anyway — crumbs, so to speak — will somehow affect the possibility of our supplies to other countries.”

Yevtukhov was referring to the new US and UK sanctions, announced on April 12,  to stop exports into their markets of Russian primary aluminium, copper and nickel, and out an end stocking and trading of the Russian metals by the London Metals Exchange (LME) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

On April 24, Andrew Home, the London expert  on the international aluminium trade, acknowledged that warehousers, metal traders and speculators,  and the Russians have already devised schemes to evade the sanctions, keep the discount for sales Rusal aluminium sales from growing, and at the same time hold the exchange benchmark price of the metal steady. Home understands the complexities of the LME trade; he admits he doesn’t know what the outcome will be.   If he knew more about Russian conditions than he and Reuters are capable of, it would be clear that Deripaska aims to buy time to defeat the sanctions and get the Russian treasury to pay the price.  

Yevtukhov’s response is that if Deripaska and Rusal are asking for a bailout by the Russian government, there are conditions: in exchange for the misfortune which the Americans and British are attempting to impose on the Russian metals sector, Deripaska’s application for state budget funds to buy aluminium from Rusal and keep it in a new state stockpile, anmd in return for letting Deripaska hold up the profit flowing into the company and into his own pocket,  he must change his strategy for the benefit of the Russian state.

 “[Mr. Yevtukhov] drew attention to the fact that the restrictions imposed by Western countries apply only to primary aluminium. They do not affect products made from Russian aluminium. ‘Experts estimate the potential and capacity of our market to 2 million tonnes, despite the fact that Rusal, as you know, produces 4.1-4.2 million tonnes approximately. Of course, this is not done overnight, but such work is underway, and its results are already evident.”  

What Yevtukhov means is that Rusal must now switch from being an upstream aluminium producer from bauxite mine to alumina refinery to aluminium smelter, exporting metal abroad,  to becoming a vertically integrated producer of such secondary and processed aluminium products as beverage cans, foil, plates, sheets, and extrusions for construction, automobile and other manufactures.

The new strategy for Rusal puts a priority on the domestic Russian market. This had been Deripaska’s strategy for the decade between 1994 and 2004. But he then abandoned the downstream because it was less profitable than upstream, and impossible to hide from Russian tax as were the upstream and export lines of business.

For Deripaska to be told by a deputy minister that he can’t have a state bailout for his unsold metal unless he accepts a revolution in corporate tax avoidance is a plan no Russian minister or president has achieved before. Or else it’s a false flag Deripaska himself is waving at Washington and London.  

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by Editor - Wednesday, April 24th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

In the last war which the Americans, British, and French fought against the Russians, they were all defeated and forced to run away. Now it’s happening again.

But if Anna Reid, author of a new history of the Allied powers’ invasion of Russia and war against the Bolsheviks,  titles her book “A Nasty Little War” (lead image, left), what title does  Reid give to the present war which the Doughboy alliance is losing for the second time? A Nasty Big War doesn’t quite do their plan for destroying Russia enough justice, does it? A Nasty Little Defeat followed by a Nasty Big Defeat comes closer to the truth, but Reid has written her book in the conviction that it will not and must not come to that again.  

One hundred and six years since the Russia Intervention of 1918-20 is long enough for Reid to conclude with one of her contemporary British officer sources: “‘Of course it could not possibly be otherwise. But it is unfortunate that events worked out as they did.’ It could have been the epitaph for the whole Intervention,” Reid adds from the British point of view, then but not now.

“So ends a not very creditable enterprise”, she quotes from a report on the desk of British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon in April 1920. Curzon then crossed out “not very” and wrote in “highly dis”.

Reid is so certain this is not the lesson of today’s allied war against Russia she declares her conclusion at the very beginning of her book. “There is no simple read-across from the Intervention. Today’s war is not a civil one, and the impressive and staunchly democratic Ukrainians are not the inept, revanchist Whites. The lazy lesson from 1918-20 – that Western meddling in the region failed then, and will again now – is completely mistaken. If the Intervention does have something to teach, it is that Putin will fail for the same reason the Whites did: because he underestimates the desire for freedom of the non-Russian nations…”

This declaration is at page 10. Reid’s history runs on for another 350 pages of the same.

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by Editor - Monday, April 22nd, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The first Dance with Bears appeared twenty-two years ago.  It began as a short commentary appearing once or twice a week. The title came from Astolphe de Custine, the greatest observer of Russia ever to be obliged to conceal what he was writing inside his hat, as the Russians he was writing about chased him across the frontier. That circumstance made for pithy style, sharp focus.

In 1839 de Custine had written: “Such ill-bred and yet well-informed, well-dressed, clever, and self-confident Russians are trained bears, the sight of which inclines me to regret the wild ones: they have not yet become polished men, and they are already spoiled savages.”  His book drew denunciations in the Russian press at the time, and was banned in Russia until 1996.

One of the subtlest – make that most duplicitous and cowardly of Russia-fighters among Americans — the State Department official George Kennan wrote that de Custine had produced “the best guide to Russia ever written”, and then proceeded to argue that when de Custine referred to Tsar Nicholas I, Kennan meant the same judgements to apply to Joseph Stalin and his heirs.

Like most of what Kennan wrote for his own circle of spoiled savages, he was half-right, half-wrong – make that, mostly wrong. In 1991, twenty years after Kennan had pontificated about de Custine, the collapse of the communist regime in Moscow released forces which had been under control, more or less, for seventy years. This allowed the savages to revert to the type de Custine had observed. Kennan and his successors called that democracy and did more than applaud.  Look where that has got them now.

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by Editor - Sunday, April 21st, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Israel is rattled.

It’s now up to Iran (lead image, left, President Ebrahim Raisi)  leader of the Arab resistance and warfighting alliance – Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansar Allah (Houthis), and the Syrian and Iraqi groups – to demonstrate that they can stop the genocidal schemes of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), and the Jewish theocracy (right, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) it enforces as a state;  or failing that, to neutralize Israel’s capacities to fight a war of attrition over everything states must have – electricity, ports, money, firepower, defences.

The Arab leadership understood this before the Iranians. In 1983 Saddam Hussein told a meeting of Iraqi Army generals: “Human nature represented by the heart of the families and sisters of the Iraqi martyrs in their own weeping and mourning will always be felt; but the Iraqis are better prepared than ever to deal with it. If it ever happens that the Iraqi people were in a conflict with their Israeli enemy, then the Iraqis would be able to withstand three years of fighting in a war. However, the Israelis cannot withstand one year of fighting in a war.”   

Seven years later in 1990, Hussein was talking in Baghdad with Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization: “[Arafat]: [Israel] has 240 nuclear warheads, 12 out of them for each Arab capital…[Hussein]: I say this and I am very calm and wearing a civil suit [everyone laughs]. But I say this so that we can get ready at this level.”

Readiness at this level was not achieved by the Iraqis, or by Hussein himself. Hamas has demonstrated since last October that the Israelis are unready. Iran demonstrated this again last weekend, despite what Israel claims to have been a near-perfect interception rate: enough missiles got through to strategic targets to prove that with hypersonic speed, higher yield  warheads, and better accuracy, the next round of Iranian missiles will be unstoppable. This prospect is what is rattling the Israelis now.

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by Editor - Wednesday, April 17th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

On Tuesday afternoon the Kremlin announced that President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi “at the Iranian side’s initiative.”

The Kremlin communiqué was posted at 1540 Moscow time.  What followed was reported by Raisi’s office at 1808 Tehran time.

There was a lag of two hours between the announcements. The two scripts are very different.

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by Editor - Tuesday, April 16th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

No Russian military source will publicly express the line that Iran’s attack on Israel of April 14 was a strategic success, despite the tactical shortcomings. This is first of all because Iran is a strategic ally of Russia in its war against the US and NATO in the Ukraine, in Syria, and in Yemen.

It is also because of what may happen next. If Israel escalates by attacking Iran and striking at the country’s infrastructure, then Iran’s counter will be to take a page out of Russia’s book and commence the one line of attack which Israel, the US and their allies cannot withstand any better than Ukraine – that’s Electric War.  

For the seven months which have elapsed since Hamas began its operation against Israel on October 7, and Israel commenced its genocide against the Palestinians,  there has been no targeting by Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, or the Syrian and Iraqi groups of Israel’s highly vulnerable maritime gas platforms, gas pipelines, coal and oil-fired electricity generating plants, the coal and oil storages nearby, solar and wind power units, or the electricity grids keeping the country alight.

The Arab inhibitions and calculations are understandable. Iran’s will disappear if Israel triggers a new round of attacks.

If and when that happens, the Palestinian failure in the US and in Europe to counterattack and stop Israel financing its war through the $60 billion genocide bond issue won’t matter.  Bond holders don’t invest in blackouts.

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by Editor - Monday, April 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

It was a relatively bright day, November 21, 1920, when Vladimir Lenin, having won the civil war and driven off the American, British, French, Canadian, and Australian invasion forces, announced: “Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country, since industry cannot be developed without electrification.”  

Come November 2024 it will be a century and four years to count what Lenin meant,  and how Russia is proving itself against everything which the military industries, special forces, weapons, intelligence so-called, operations, and plans of the old invasion coalition, plus Germany, can throw at it.  So on November 21, 2024, it will be time to revise Lenin’s maxim to read:  Russia is military power plus the de-electrification of the countries which attack it.

This is electric war.

To make the war aim unambiguously clear, President Vladimir Putin ordered his ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Vasily Nebenzya (lead image, left), to read out a paper at his desk in the UN Security Council chamber on April 11: “very soon, the only topic for international meetings in Ukraine will be the unconditional surrender  of the Kiev regime.”  

Note what the terms “unconditional surrender of the Kiev regime” mean: total military defeat of the Ukrainian, American, British, French, Polish,  and other forces on the Ukrainian territory and in the air surrounding; surrender of the municipal administrations of the east-bank cities, including Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk, and Odessa; disarmament and demilitarization of the territory between Kiev and the Polish border; exit of every member of the regime, starting with Vladimir Zelensky.

This is an ultimatum without alternatives for either Moscow or Kiev. In electric war, are there any alternatives?

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by Editor - Monday, April 15th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Triumphalism and self-promotion by US alt-media generals (er, colonels, majors, lieutenants) and Donald Trump contribute nothing of value to the Russian analysis of the Iran’s operation against Israel on Saturday night, April 13. That’s to say, analysis, not of who has gained, who has lost, but of what there is to be learned for fighting the next round.  

Not much, a Russian military source intimates. “A lot of fireworks but no real damage. The Iranians let it be known they wouldn’t go beyond fireworks . The panic and stampede like the situation in Jerusalem once again shows how jittery Israel is. But the Iranians have no fight left against this enemy – the last six months have shown it.”

Not much — a North American military source agrees. “I think it was a lot of noise-making all round. The Iranians telegraphed, then pulled, their punch. They did the same thing in January 2020 with Operation Martyr Soleimani.  A lot of noise was made about ‘punishment’, ‘revenge’, etc.,  while, at the same time, signals were sent to the enemy stating that an attack is imminent, is retaliatory in nature and not to be seen as escalatory. This is how the Iranian Government saves face while, in their mind, avoiding a direct major conflict which would certainly threaten their continued rule.”

In public at least, and for the time being, this is not the assessment of the leading Russian military blogger, Boris Rozhin, author of the Colonel Cassad short-read Telegram  and longer-read Live Journal.  His isn’t the place — nor is this — to anticipate the assessments under way at the General Staff and Kremlin, or to report how they are gauging the impact of what has just happened on Russian operations in the Ukraine war, if any.  

A small exception can be made for the Kremlin’s “I told you so” following Trump’s Schnecksville declaration on Saturday. “God bless the people of Israel,” Trump said. “The weakness we have shown is unbelievable and would not have happened if we were in office… America prays for Israel. We send our absolute support to everyone who is in harm’s way…We will restore America’s strength at home.”    

Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, is where Trump said this at a voter rally. He’s unlikely to know that the meaning of the Yiddish word, schneck, is a sluggard, an idler: Schnecksille is Bum’s Town. Trump’s statement there confirms part of the reason for President Vladimir Putin’s February 14 declaration of preference for Trump to be defeated in the US president election in seven months’ time.   

For public discussion in Moscow, there remains to be clarified why the Iranian drone wave, missile wave combination failed so much more comprehensively than the Russian operational method in the Ukraine. “The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] claims 99% of downed targets, the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps]  claims 50% of successful hits (meaning ballistics),” Rozhin sums up. “It is obvious that Israel will in every possible way downplay the consequences of the strike and hide the victims and destruction, as this is a matter of military prestige. It is obvious that Iran will exaggerate the consequences of the strike as much as possible and carry out active information activities aimed at increasing the military prestige of the IRGC and the Iranian Armed Forces.”

“Israel is now at a fork in the road. To strike directly at Iran means to receive a retaliatory missile strike, an even more powerful one, which is guaranteed to penetrate the Israeli air defence system. At the same time, the United States has already stated that it will not take part in attacks on Iran, hinting that Israel should limit itself to something like the usual strikes against Hezbollah and Iranian proxies in Syria. Similarly, the European satellites of the United States actually warn Israel against attacks on Iran. But this, of course, will be perceived in Israel itself as a sign of weakness, because Iran has shown that it can directly strike directly at Israel, which is the intersection of all Israel’s red lines.”

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by Editor - Sunday, April 14th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Advertisements for replacements of Vladimir Zelensky aren’t unusual, even if he has disposed of almost all of them already.

That leaves just one, Andrei Yermak, head of the Presidential Office —  prompter, grey eminence, comfort blanket of Zelensky in almost every significant move he has made since 2019– and now candidate to become prime minister in a revolutionary transfer of power in the Kiev regime,  reducing the presidency to a shadow; centralizing all military and civil command in Yermak’s office,  but letting Zelensky stay alive.

Advertising Andrei Yermak to be prime minister is unusual in Vzglyad, the semi-official platform in Moscow for political and security analysis. This is especially so at this point in time when President Vladimir Putin has identified the Kiev regime as responsible for the Crocus City Hall attack,  and  the General Staff are escalating the Russian offensive on the ground along the line of contact east of the Dnieper River,  and in the air deep into the west as far as Lvov.  

What war aim would be served by Vzglyad’s signal that Yermak may be an acceptable counterparty to the Kremlin for negotiations to end the war short of regime capitulation – unless the signal is a false flag,  intended to encourage Zelensky to save himself by eliminating Yermak, as he did General Valery Zaluzhny, and thereby leave nothing and no one in Kiev to put a brake on the Russian resolve to create a demilitarized zone all the way to the Polish border.

What follows is a verbatim translation of the publication on April 9 of a piece in Vzglyad by Vasily Stoyakin, entitled “The all-powerful ‘Green Cardinal’ is operating behind Zelensky’s back”.  There is no precedent in the mainstream Russian media, nor in military blogs and the internet media, for promotion of any end for the Zelensky regime, except its end.  A profile of Yermak which is neutral to positive towards the role he has played so far and may play in the future is so exceptional that the fact  it appears now is more significant than what the story, compiled from earlier publications, actually says.   

Oleg Tsarev, a leading Ukrainian opposition figure in exile in Russia and potential candidate for the Ukrainian president after the Russian victory, has ignored Yermak in his regular Telegram commentaries; Zelensky and Yermak targeted Tsarev for assassination in Crimea last October, but failed.

Dmitry Rogozin, a possible presidential candidate for the Russian presidency, has mentioned Yermak once in his Telegram channel, declaring: “the Bandera leadership of Ukraine has embarked on the path of ‘the final solution of the Russian question.’ Well, [they are] creative people. [They are] comedians [Zelensky], [television] producers [Yermak]. Hitler was also an artist. Mediocre. But in other respects he surpassed everyone. This, apparently, is enviable. They want to repeat it. We’ll have to do it again.”  Rogozin is currently senator for the Zaporozhye region. He was targeted for Ukrainian assassination in Donetsk in December 2022; he survived.

There are two reasons why Yermak might be considered by the Kremlin to be the substitute for Zelensky with whom a negotiated settlement can be reached. One is that it has reportedly happened before. In September 2020, when Yermak and Zelensky were meeting in Muscat, Oman, with the Omani foreign minister and other officials, the Russian Security Council Secretary, Nikolai Patrushev, flew to Muscat and reportedly met them for several hours. What happened between them remains secret. Less secret is that the aircraft on which the two Ukrainians returned to Kiev was identified to be the same aircraft which had brought Patrushev to Oman.

The secrecy was exposed by the US government’s propaganda organ, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and then amplified by the Ukrainian press.  Yermak claimed the report “does not correspond to reality”  attacking the US-financed Ukrainian source for “a blatant manipulation of public opinion [as]  part of the aggressor’s information operations against Ukraine.”  Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed the reported meeting was “a classic example of fake news”.  

The second reason for possible Russian favour for Yermak is a long history of his family’s connections to Russia. His mother is a Leningrader; his father, a Jewish Kievan, served in a   Soviet government agency in Afghanistan;  since then he and Yermak himself have had personal and business connections with Russians engaged with the intelligence services.  

Stoyakin cites no official Russian source on Yermak and draws this uncertain conclusion: “Last year, it was assumed that in the event of Zelensky’s death, Yermak could head a particular  collective management body that would replace the president; according to the Constitution, the acting speaker [Ruslan] Stefanchuk should be, but he does not enjoy authority. Some western media even believe that Yermak may become Zelensky’s successor. Ukrainian political analysts, given Yermak’s low popularity, believe that the head of the OP [Office of the President] will try to become prime minister while retaining control of the president’s office. At the same time, the centre of the country’s political life will move to the government. However, it seems that such a change is possible only in peacetime – in wartime, the main focus is still on the military sphere, which is subordinate to the president.”

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by Editor - Wednesday, April 10th, 2024
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by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

Ice cream is ancient enough to have been demanded by at least three well-known emperors – Alexander the Great of Greece, Nero of Rome, and Charles I of England, all of them ill-fated.

Ice cream, as we know it, doesn’t become easy to eat until it ceased to be plutocratic.  Refrigeration technology, not political revolution, did the trick.

The industry of cows is a fillip, too. This is why New Zealand, world’s largest exporter of dairy products, is also the world’s leading consumer of ice cream. At 28.4 litres per person per annum, New Zealanders far outstrip Americans at 20.8 litres, and Australians at 18 litres. Sub-zero winter countries like Finland, Sweden, and Canada lag further behind.  In Europe’s hottest summer weather, Portugal is far ahead of Spain, France, and Italy in the volume of ice cream sold  but that’s because foreign tourists buy it, not the locals.

So when Soyuzmoloko, the Russian Union of Milk Producers, announced last week that in 2023 the volume of ice cream produced in Russia had jumped by 13%, and per capita consumption of dairy products had recovered to the Soviet level, the news is significant. It means that Russians eating more ice cream is a measure of confidence in the present value of their spending power, the future security of their savings, and victory in the present war.

When the American poet Wallace Stevens wrote his poem “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” in 1922, he was holidaying in Cuba. Observing the funeral of a poor woman whose corpse was in another room, the guests were eating ice cream. The poet’s pessimistic conclusion was “Let be be finale of seem/The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream”.  Stevens was implying that ice cream is more permanent in life than life itself – at least among poor Cubans.

When Winston Churchill was in Moscow to meet Joseph Stalin on a sub-zero day in the autumn of 1944, he asked an aide what Russians he could see were eating as they stood in the city street. When told they were eating ice cream, Churchill reportedly said: “The people who eat ice cream in such cold weather are invincible.”  

None of Churchill’s successors in Europe or the US has got this message yet.  

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by Editor - Sunday, April 7th, 2024
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