The chief Russian statistician, Vladimir Sokolin, backed Mr Gref's assertions by saying that Russia was entering "the stage of tough competition for immigrants with European and former USSR countries".
On 26 June 1990, for example, Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov said that if the USSR gets financial assistance from the European Community, it will use the aid to pay off chronic Soviet foreign payment arrearages.
Granted the USSR full membership and borrowing privileges in the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development despite previous well-founded and formal American objections to such an arrangement on the grounds that it would divert critically needed resources from Eastern Europe to the USSR.