Soviet oil production, the most strategic sector of the civilian economy, is declining which bodes ill for meeting the rigid requirements of the domestic economy, Eastern Europe, and the crucial hard currency export market.

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By the 1980s the state gas sector that ran the operation was controlled by a classic Soviet functionary, Victor Chernomyrdin, and he held on tight to his post until 1992, a year after Boris Yeltsin became the first popularly elected leader of Russia.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Russia allowed foreign companies into its energy sector to help it with extraction technology in the post-Soviet era.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Certainly, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the evolution of the Russian nation caused myriad changes in every sector of life there.

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Internal political turmoil has delayed economic development in Ukraine and the IMF loan depends on the ex-Soviet state being able to balance its budget and make reforms to its banking sector.

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