Russians don't have a decent shuttle. They have very decent Soyuz space capsules, however. They were designed in sixties. And they have been updated and upgraded until these days.
The Russians did try to have a shuttle, but that was in the days of SSSR (or CCCP, as it's written in cyrillic letters) - but it actualyl cost quite a bit of money. It was called "Buran" and it's budget was HUGE - actually, it is somewhere referred to as one of the main reasons for Soviet Union's collapse.
That shuttle looked pretty much similar to NASA shuttle, but the differences were actually many. To begin with, the Buran had no primary engines in itself like the Orbiter has. Instead it actually used huge external main rocket engines - Energia it was called - and up to four solid-fuel booster rockets, if my memory serves me right.
EDIT: It didn't - the booster rockets actually used liquid fuel. :
The ship that was meant to replace the Shuttle was the Locheed X-33, which was supposed to become the first re-usable single-stage-to-orbit vessel, but the project was killed due to technical problems at the time...
Construction of the prototype was some 85% complete when the program was cancelled by NASA in 2001, after a long series of technical difficulties including flight instability and excess weight. In particular, the composite liquid hydrogen fuel tank failed during testing in November 1999. The tank was constructed of honeycomb composite walls and internal structures to be light enough in order for the craft to demonstrate necessary technologies for single-stage-to-orbit operations. A SSTO craft must reach what is called a "mass fraction" where the vehicle weight unfueled is 10% of the weight of the craft when fully fueled. This would allow for a vehicle to fly to low earth orbit without the need for external boosters and fuel tanks, as currently used with the Space Shuttle. But, after the composite tank's failure on the test stand during fueling and pressure tests, NASA came to the conclusion that the technology of the time was simply not advanced enough for such a design.
NASA had invested $912m in the project before cancellation and Lockheed Martin a further $357m. Due to changes in the space launch business -- including the challenges faced by companies such as Globalstar, Teledesic and Iridium and the resulting drop in the number of anticipated commercial satellite launches per year -- Lockheed Martin deemed that the business case to continue development privately without government support was unviable.
After the cancellation, engineers were able to make a working Oxygen tank out of Carbon Fiber Composite.
It sucks. I so would have wanted to see the X-33 in action, it's a cool ship. Ever thought where the EA Kestrel stems its design from?
And now, guess what is the proposed "new" solution to replace the GoodOl' Space Shuttle?
An Upscaled Apollo capsule that is called a "crew exploration vehicle" (CEV). So, the space technology is actually reverting back to space capsules, as re-usable craft seem to be more unreliable than originally estimated - whereas the booster engine technology has become quite reliable. Ironically, it also seems that the "new" target for NASA is also exactly the same as it was in the sixties - which was, and is "to get to the Moon, set up an installation there and use that as a harbour for future Mars missions".
They'll probably get into Moon all right, they just get the Apollo-Saturn plans and scale them up to match the current technology (as is already done with the CEV), then tehy'll commit some missions. Then the political atmosphere changes and manned spaceflight is no more as cool a thing to do as now.
Personally, I'd put more money on constructing the space elevator than getting onto Moon. We've been there already.
Oh and Locheed also had plans for an upscaled version of X-33, called the VentureStar, but that project was buried along with the X-33.
