John Helmer

John Helmer is an Australian-born journalist, born in 1946, who has run his own independent news bureau in Moscow since 1989 and is often described as the longest-serving Western correspondent in Russia. He was educated at the University of Melbourne and at Harvard, where he took a doctorate in political science, and taught political science and sociology at Melbourne and at George Washington University. Before Russia he advised governments and political leaders in Australia, Greece and the United States, including the Carter administration, and published books on American urban and presidential politics and on Greek and Middle Eastern affairs. Since 1989 he has written almost entirely on Russia, first as a business correspondent covering metals, mining, diamonds, shipping and food trade for outlets in London, New York, Hong Kong, Toronto and Johannesburg, and since 2001 on his blog "Dances with Bears", which carries the bulk of his reporting. His books of recent years cover the Skripal case, MH17 and Navalny. In 2012 and 2013 he taught investigative journalism at the University of Melbourne. In 1995 a former KGB officer, Yuri Shvets, alleged that Helmer had been recruited by the KGB, a claim later disputed by another former KGB officer, Victor Cherkashin.