Finnish Air Force utilized MiG-21s until Hornets became available. Their public commentary was quite nice for the MiG-21 despite a number of high profile accidents where pilots elected to stay in the plane in order to prevent the stricken plane from hitting houses. In person, the pilots were very happy to get rid of it. The same applies pretty much to any weapon system from Russia, they look good on paper, but it is the actual implementation which is almost always lacking. Hand held weapon systems from there tend work best, but anything more complex is highly questionable. Any commentary of the actual performance of the tanks in Chechnya is quite revealing: the fire prevention systems of T-80s were not used since that would have increased the work load of maintenance Avionics coolant is ethanol based, and the mechanics drink it, leading to reduced or non-existing performance of the jets. And this is rampant up to this day, up to the point where I'm starting to think that the best way to stop Russian army on their tracks would be to place some 50 000 liter containers of Vodka on their path.
And yet India still happily buying up Russian tanks and aircraft when the USA, Britain, Germany, etc. would be more than happy to sell equipment to such a large military. Out of all potential tanks, the only tanks still in the running to replace Peru's ancient T-55s and AMX-13s are the M1 Abrams and the T-90S. Canada, of all countries, is using Mi-17 utility helicopters to complement its Chinooks, rather than, say, the UH-60 or MH-53 we'd have easy access to south of the border.
The T-80s deployed in the First Chechen War had a lot of issues, most of them related to the sorry state of the Russian military after the fall of the USSR. They were deployed without infantry support, many didn't have their smoke launchers loaded, and most didn't even have their ERA packages installed. Their failure isn't a result of them being bad tanks, it's a result of the army having serious difficulties because of the fall of the USSR. Again, notice how the T-90s deployed during the Second Chechen War didn't have any of these issues. They were more competently used, they were equipped properly, and they performed quite well. Times have changed.
Again, stop assuming the USSR or even the Russia of 20 years ago paints an accurate picture of the state of the Russian military now.
And I'm just going to add this, might help you get a better idea the differences between US and Russian aircraft of 25 years ago (and it's generally a fascinating read):
http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/how-to-win-in-a-dogfight-stories-from-a-pilot-who-flew-1682723379And yes, I know they are supposed to have R77 in service. The question is, is it really? That is because the real life performance of R27 in itself is quite dubious, and to carry that instead of R77 is sort of a statement. I know Australia goes with Sparrows, but the later variants of AIM-7 seem to perform considerably better. Again, it might be that I'm over-reading things here, but then again, Russia has a proven track record of this sort of stuff happening, and I have seen it happen before. That and the cancellation of a long distance ramjet version of R77, and there certainly isn't going to be any help regarding the avionics in the recent years from Western side!
That statement probably being "we have a lot of these and don't really need to use more modern missiles against older, less well maintained Georgian and Ukrainian planes." And I'm sorry, "Russia has a proven track record of this stuff happening"? As opposed to who, the Americans? Yes, a shining example of flawless technology development there.
There's also the fact that much of the Russian Air Force's inventory of fighters (about half, going by the numbers) can't actually fire the R-77. It's a post-USSR missile, and only modernized aircraft can fire it. The US Air Force had a similar problem when they adopted the AMRAAM. The AIM-7 was still pretty widely used during the 2003 Iraq War.
The discussion about missiles and tanks was related to my earlier comment of the possibility of tanks going the way of the battleship. Nobody actually wants to start a tank-to-tank slogging fest without decisive advantage in numbers, so instead I suppose a more portable, more silent and faster systems will be used instead since that will allow shooting the tank while tank cannot shoot back. And of the Arena, I remain in that the system was created to prevent anti-tank missiles from hitting the tank. However, it was not tested in the same type of engagement where Russia last time suffered a number of casualities (which was a tactics failure, not a tank failure in itself). So no roof top RPGs in this case yet. Correcting the tactics also made easier for the tanks, as most of the threats are then coming from the frontal sector where the tank is the strongest. However, I suppose Russian armed forces will like Armata since it most likely rectifies some hilarious design features (from the opposition point of view) of T-72s, T-80s, and up to T-90s.
Battleships became obsolete because their primary purpose (killing ships) was done better with anti-ship missiles, torpedoes, and bombs, and you don't need a big heavy battleship to throw those around. Smaller ships and aircraft do it just fine. Tanks, on the other hand, don't have a job that can be done by something else. Infantry don't move as fast, and aircraft can't hold ground (and are starting to become even more vulnerable than tanks because AA systems are advancing insanely fast and planes can't hide as well, even stealth ones).