MOSCOW, June 14 (Xinhua) -- Russia's aid to Central Asia amounted to 6.7 billion U.S. dollars between 2008 and 2015, a Russian official said Tuesday.
"Central Asia is one of Russia's most important regions as a humanitarian component of Russian foreign policy," said Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin in an article published in the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Moscow has channeled 55 million dollars to fund the United Nations' World Food Program in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in the past three years, he said. "The money was spent on flour and wheat, and also on the development of sustainable school feeding program."
According to Karasin, more than 55,000 students from Central Asia have been studying in Russia since 2015, and the majority of them have attended tuition-free colleges. The Russian government allocated 100 million U.S. dollars per year for their free education.
