Seizing on a $93 million debt that Armenia owed to Russia, the Putin administration demanded payment in either cash or equity in Armenia’s major industries. Cash-strapped Armenia had no alternative but to hand over the shares, which it did in a 2002 treaty candidly titled “Possessions in Exchange for Debt” – a reminder of the infamous “debt-for-equity” swaps of the Yeltsin years (another Chubais invention), which spawned Russia’s oligarchs.