What's your layman's opinion of the Russian doctors (ignoring the fact we are yet still to do CLL), Android?
I mean, I sure find reassuring when I see good studies/papers published by Rozbruch and Paley on pubmed and other such scientific literature repositories and/or search engines.
I don't have an overarching opinion an entire country's doctors since I think there are good and bad doctors everywhere. For instance, Africa sounds like the last place we'd find a reputable doctor, but we have the talented and personable Dr. Birkholtz in South Africa. It doesn't change my mind on the continent as a whole, but it shifts my perspective.
Dr. Paley and Dr. Rozbruch indeed have impressive works all over. When it comes to Russia,
Dr. Solomin is quite the published author, and
Dr. Kulesh is a coauthor in many of them.
Dr. Paley wrote the forward for Dr. Solomin's
textbook on external fixation, which (to use your words) is reassuring. While it's not the headline-grabbing Paley/Precice combo, he did help to create the
Ortho-SUV hexapod as well.
That being said, no matter how competent a doctor is, I would stay local during distraction even if they allow it. Things can be fixed, but prevention is better.