I do not insist to have there independent LIR at once - but at least you must have some office there, with people speaking in English and Russion, and bank transferese available in Roubles. And there must be someone in Amsterdam who represents our interests, anyway.
The main idea they (and others) have said was _we'd like to choose_. Now no one have any chance to choose - you must send fax to Amsterdam, transfere money yourself to the Amsterdam, and so on... You (we) can't get a ticket and fly to the RIPE at once - it takes a time to get visas etc. No anybody can phone to Amsterdam - it must be english-speaking person. And so on...
Although I don't completely agree, I'd suggest RIPE to have someone who does speak Russian to serve the needs of Russian-speaking registries from the exSU. Regarding payment in roubles - I don't think this is worth to be discussed, because no country in the "CIS" has "hard" currency, and it will be unethical to pay RIPE in roubles or any other CIS currency - you understand me :-) I also had problems paying in ECU, but RIPE now accepts USD, so we have no problems here... IMHO, of course, regards Edgar