I believe the russians make a lot of carbon fibre (raw material) for the world market.
It will be interesting to see how composite aircraft tollerate lightening strikes. I've seen the wing spar of a model plane burn when it acidentally shorted out a small nicad battery. It doesn't conduct as well as Aluminium and the extra resistance causes more heat to be produced - at least that's how I understand it. I'm not a professional composite engineer!
Edit: This report details what can happen to a composite glider (not normally provided with lightening protection). Good job they had parachutes...
http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~cline/...t%20report.htm