Originally Posted by Antonio

Russian attacked Afghanistan (well, technically the USSR)

as for the Russia-Island thing, it's simple - the Russians have large deposits there too and they want to make sure they get their money back

there's a difference though - in the case of UK it was mostly ordinary people having their money deposited in Island banks, in the case of the Russians it was large oil producers so they sure can lobby in favor of that loan (at least that's what I heard on TV)