I dislike how “Russian inferior flight control standards” bla bla blah are used. Like my sister calling Brazilian medical testing of Ivermectin as “third world”. The Russians are and were very good at navigating and flying. They beat us to Space. American medicine is third world, except for “our betters”.
The 1990s was a really hard time for the USSR. The Soviet Union collapsed over three years and formally dissolved in 1991. Ron Brown died in 1996, you will not find many who said the USSR was having a strong recovery by then. I had a friend who went to Russia during this time and it took several days to arrange a international phone out of Moscow. During this time, their civilian and military hardware really was bad.