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> Your comment makes it sounds like you believe the U.S. had the power to decide whether or not Russia would turn into a kleptocracy or not.

There's a lot of evidence that US kleptocrats collaborated to help turn Russia into a kleptocracy. Practically encouraged rather than discouraged that outcome.

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I'm sceptical that turning Russia into a kleptocracy was a plan. Usually participants just want to quickly enrich themselves. So I can agree that "let's make it good" plan didn't work well enough, but for planned degradation I'd like to see more arguments.

You cite no evidence for this conspiratorial claim.

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/harvard-boys-do-russ...

American consultants were instrumental in organizing the massive selloff of state assets, and quite a few of them turned around and used their knowledge of the system they created to become quite rich. Andrei Shleifer said as much in an interview on the topic, though I can't find it now.

edit: it seems like someone else posted the same link while I was looking for the interview.

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