Off... Rust was intercepted several times. They ‘ve seen a kid in a cockpit and flew away thinking of it as a kind of provocation (KAL007 event was only a few years earlier).
Yes. On a timescale of hours, they failed miserably. Rust's successful stunt enabled Gorby to sack the Old Guard in the Soviet military.
Of course, this meteor's timescale was way faster than hours. They never even knew it was coming. It was over after they photograhed it but before they knew what it was. They were gazing skyward bemused when the shockwave arrived, at which time, they were truly amazed.
There was a much bigger example of similar in 1908, 1500 miles to the east, in Tunguska. It had an estimated explosive yield in the tens of megatons. There would have been a lot fewer Youtube uploads if anything like it had hit Chelyabinsk.