... 95% of Russian programmers I spoke to (and 99.99% worthy ones) can read/write enough to understand whatever they need to know. Generally speaking, if a programmer in Russia doesn't know English, he's frowned upon by his colleagues, exclusions are usually over 45 years old. P.S. I learned my English through reading HTTP RFC, and amused the hell out of my English teacher in college by using associated terminology :)

For whoever can read Russian: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/129943/ For those who can't - "Marina Akulich, blog-secretary of MTS, this is an official company comment - at this time company does not prohibit using any VoIP services such as Skype and the likes. Obviously, installation of such software is not blocked an all corresponding services are granted at full scale. The issue came out of Comstar-Direct (probably an acquisition done by MTS) company who did not have a license to provide voice communications over Internet (translator: that's a weird case of Russian licensing to you). All customer agreements are being updated now and this paragraph will be removed from all new version of such agreements". Bottom line: corporate SNAFU.

I hope they enjoy themselves, it's a fun place to be in, and that's from someone who spent 27 years in Kemerovo before moving to Houston, TX. Just make sure they gear up for like -40F, as that's what weather is like there in recent couple years. And no, we don't have bears running around and drinking 96% alcohol from a ice bottle while knocking people with balalaikas :)