[GYang]

By the way, Albert told me that HCL hardly ever sells their gear in Russia (I won't go into the reasons why).

I can assure potential overseas customers that their brand is really not known here in Russia, no studio (at least more-less significant one) has their gears in rack and they really don't have any ties with Russians.
You can be calm and buy their products, guys are politically correct and western minded. They make comparatively low priced products for you (I would always pay 3 times more for proven brand, but I'm snob) who doesn't want to feed greedy boutique manufacturers. I hate Russian military tubes and buy 20 times costlier British or German military tubes (bad sounding gear means badly spent money to gearslutz).

We can only appreciate their efforts and pray to God that they become next Neve or at least SPL. Since than, I am not potential buyer, but have nothing against those who opted for them.