Pax Vobiscum
I can understand why the Russians applaud, some of the stuff I witnessed flying around there in the mid 1990's was, I kid you not, staggering. Non functioning seat belts was the most common, on the occasions when there were cabin crew (sometimes there were none) they just told you to tie the belt in a knot if the buckle wasn't there or didn't work. On occasion there were no belts at all and on one flight I remember the belt was substituted with a piece of rope.
Armenian and Azeri airlines often flew overloaded with people standing in the aisles, this still happens today as a colleague of mine flew from Yerevan to somewhere in Nagarno Karabakh last month and reported 'standers'