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. That's known as Xerox box affair and is surprisingly well documented in English. This collusion didn't help Yeltsin much actually (he did everything himself), similar to Russia's involvement in the US elections 2 decades later, 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 with USSR. (does the name ring a bell? It should)