Education has been a prominent part of Soviet development assistance. As a re-emerging donor Russia also recognizes its importance and provides its assistance in several ways, including free higher education in Russia to students from developing countries, contributions to the education pooled funds and a few programs being administered via multilateral institutions. Russia is facing various challenges in the area of international development assistance, such as limited institutional capacity for aid delivery, incomplete legal basis, shortage of qualified and experience staff, weakness of development assistance institutions and so on. If unresolved these problems might undermine the effectiveness of Russia's development effort for the attainment of MDGs and any future development goals.