Yeah, it wasn't far off that.
Life expectancy dropped by 2.56 years between 1990 and 1999 in Russia. Not great but not even close to being historically significant.
Life expectancy in the USA dropped by nearly 3 years in the space of 2 years between 2019 and 2021. More than the entire 1990s in Russia.
Or if you want to see what an extreme drop in life expectancy looks like, it dropped by 16 years in between 1940 and 1945 in Germany.
A blatant lie that keeps getting repeated. Yeltsin hired some American campaigners and advertisers because he wanted a loud Western-style election campaign. It's funny how Yeltsin having American campaign/advertising advisers has been spun into claims that the US did a coup in Russia.
One thing west didn't properly grok - russia was never your friend. Never, ever. There was no period where this was true, not even in 90s, not when we talk about people on top. Paranoid suspicion and fear of losing power to steal and control entire country was too much for those in power. Especially since now you could actually steal last bolt and nut, unlike during communism where everything was state owned by definition and you competed only for power trip and some basic benefits on top of what many others had.
The Kremlin lies, period.
And a government composed of people who lie, backstab, and cheat each other and their population to this extent - again, with ample evidence from history since 1917 - is NEVER to be trusted, and ALWAYS an enemy.
Clinton/Gore administration openly aligned themselves with Yeltsin/Chernomyrdin, their "friendship" with the autocrat was a big and visible thing. They ignored all the red flags and helped to create the problem they tried to "fight" later, despite of the existence of much more prominent politicians who were clean and principled enough (ex. Nemtsov, who was hugely popular before that campaign and publicly declined to run for the president when he heard about Clinton's support for Yeltsin).
Regardless of the extent of the actual involvement (it was probably not that strong), it was enough for many in Russia to despise them and call it a collusion, which it at least partly was - absolutely open and marketed as something noble, without any conspiracy. Denying that is silly.
Well, kinda, but not in the way russian propaganda and delusions project. Clinton wantes to help Russia join the human civilization but Putin throwed all that to trash.
And now Putin wants the human civilization to join barbarism, with the help of populist right.
The accounting gimmicks, the revenue streams, the segregated assets, I learn so much replaying what oligarchs did when the state had to divest of everything