@solarpapst I seem to remember that during Gulf War I, Gorbachev asked the West for less than the daily cost of war in order to help the economic transition (and the USSR helped by providing the details of the military facilities they had built in Iraq). Bush said no, he wanted to back Yeltsin instead, and thus Gorbachev had to rely on hardliners for support, and eventually we ended up with Russian oligarchs and Putin.