[orbital-decay]

This post oversimplifies several things, or gets them wrong. Most money were from the IMF, France and Germany, not the US, and it was in loans, it wasn't just aid. Clinton was a "personal friend" of Yeltsin, the same "elite" who stole tremendous amount of foreign money, refused to limit his power to create checks and balances, botched the privatisation and generally turned Russia into oligarchy with controlled media. He was also a person who led Putin to power. This "friendship" ended up in their collusion in 1996 elections to save Boris (already massively hated by then, due to the Chechen war and privatisation) against the communist opponent. Part of that is known as Xerox affair and is surprisingly well documented in English. Similar to Russia's involvement in the US elections 2 decades later, the US involvement didn't help Yeltsin much in 1996 actually (he did everything himself), but it made the population disillusioned towards the US, created a fertile ground for the national myth, and more importantly the collusion pushed aside Nemtsov, then the most popular politician with no ties to USSR. (does the name ring a bell? It should)