Russia has joined the ranks of Third World air forces. The cronic fuel shortages that have limited pilots to two or three hours of flying a month. This has always been a characteristic of poor nations that buy high performance warplanes, and then discover that they cannot afford the fuel and spare pilots to let pilots develop and maintain good flying skills. A new worry is that if there is ever, say, a peacekeeping operation involving warplanes fro several nation, including Russia, it could get ugly up there. Lacking the same high flying skills as Western pilots (who fly 15-20 hours a month), Russian aircraft would be more likely to cause confusion and collisions.