i am john lipsky. i am senior fellow at the foreign policy institute here. used to hang out at the international monetary fund across the street from our distinguished speaker's homebase. today, it is my honor and pleasure to welcome back birgit the program leader and lead economist for the russian federation, europe and central asia at the world bank. she has been at the world bank for 11 years now. the last three, she has been based in moscow. who are luckyou enough to be here a year ago when she visited, to present the economicent or new report on russia of the world bank, i think folks found the .eport a little gloomy apparently, she tells me a lot of people were questioning why they were so gloomy. as things worked out, you will get presented a synopsis of the latest world bank's russian economic report. looking back, i am sure she is asked why she was not gloomier and why she was so sunny a year ago. the title probably gives away some of the themes of the presentation. recovery."ourney to as i told her earlier, unfortunately, the weather is appropriate

i am john lipsky, i am senior fellow at the foreign policy institute here, but formerly used to hang out at the international monetary fund just across the street from our distinguished speaker's home base. well, sort of home base. and today it's my honor and pleasure to welcome back to csisberget hansel, who is the program leader and lead economist for the russian federation, europe and central asia at the world bank. he's been at the world bank for 11 years now. but the last three she has been based in moscow. and for those of you who were lucky enough to be here a year ago when she visited to present the then current or new economic report on russia of the world bank, i think folks found the report a little gloomy. apparently she tells me that she was -- a lot of folks questioning why they were so gloomy. and as things worked out, here is -- you're going to get presented a synopsis of the latest world bank russia economic report. and, of course, looking back i'm sure she now gets asked why weren't you gloomier. why were you so sunny a year ago. and i think that the title probably