Bill Clinton: “First of all, most of the direct aid that the United States has given to Russia has been in the area of dealing with the…”

“First of all, most of the direct aid that the United States has given to Russia has been in the area of dealing with the aftermath of the cold war. And we put a lot of resources into helping bring down the nuclear threat so that Russia would be able to find other resources to deal with the human problems of the people. Secondly, we have recently worked very hard to qualify Russia for very large sums of funds through the international financial institutions, which should be beginning to flow now. Thirdly, we are working on what specific things we can do in addition to that to, both on our own and through international cooperation with other countries, to deal with some of the most urgent humanitarian problems. Just yesterday, for example, when I was in St. Petersburg, I had a conversation about what we could do to help to get more humanitarian aid to benefit the Russian children in some specific areas of problems that have been outlined. So I know this is frustrating to you because the economy collapsed so much, and it's not totally recovered. But I believe that the economy is getting better and that, because of that, more aid will be able to flow now. And I think that if you can stay on the course of reform, I believe that there will be marked improvements in the next couple of years. That's what I believe. But I also think, as a practical matter, that I and other world leaders who want to support Russia need to examine much more specifically some of the humanitarian problems that we could alleviate at what is a relatively small cost to ourselves with a huge benefit to the people of Russia. Peter, do you want to translate that? Did you understand? Can you hear me? Peter, are you going to say that in Russian or not? Do we need to do that? Oh, it's simultaneous. Thank you very much.”