Russian planes are irrelevant in the first world. You cannot argue that fact. No one who does not need to fly a Russian plane will fly one. They fly them because they cannot afford any other manufacturers. Look at Aeroflot's fleet. What are they running now? 25% Russian planes?
The Superjet 100 is a perfect example of Russian planes and the outlook the world has on them. Nobody wants it. It's cheaper to run but it's still a Sukhoi and that has a bad connotation.
Necro'ed, but...
They're irrelevant because of the Cold War/communism. Until the 1970s-ish, Soviet planes were very much on par with Western aviation. Hell, even the VC10 had a few design cues from the Il-62, notably the "dogtoothed" wing.
Then major advances in avionics and engine technology gave Western-built planes a massive upper hand, and new planes like the Il-86 and the Tu-144 were forced to run on less-advanced engines with up to five crew, giving a much higher operating cost.
But that's beside the point. No one from the Western world other than Cuba and Venezuela had easy access to Soviet jets, and vice versa. So even by the time Soviet/Russian designs caught up with Western designs (which took awhile due in part to the collapse of the Soviet Union and economic stagnation in Russia), everyone who needed a jet of that size already had one in their fleet; there was no point in introducing another type that did the same thing as an already-existing type.
The vast majority of Western operators also had no experience with flying an Ilyushin or a Tupolev, and by that I mean they had no experience with maintaining the planes. Different design philosophies also existed: most Soviet/Russian jets were built beefy in order to withstand the cold and often poor weather conditions at airfields, and also to land on runways which were often unpaved or had poor runway surfaces at remote locations. Those conditions alone accounted for many accidents involving, for instance, the Tu-154, moreso than some sort of structural failure of the aircraft.
Also consider political ties. As a consortium, Airbus breaks down production of most of their jets and assigns different responsibilities to different countries. Obviously as a result there's plenty of pressure to buy Airbus in European countries, especially those that directly participate in manufacturing. Same thing with the US; take a look at the fleet histories of some of the legacies as well as the KC-135 tanker replacement contract that originally went to Northrop Grumman/Airbus.
About 12% of Aeroflot's fleet is Russian-built. They got considerable tax breaks on the purchases of their Il-96s iirc.
The Superjet 100 has 234 firm orders as of the time of this posting along with options for 107 more. Not bad for an aircraft entering so late into the game. It's fully certified to Western standards, and I would have no qualms about sitting my ass in one of them (or any other Soviet/Russian plane for that matter).
I always get stuck on aircraft that were built out of arcane technology! My last trip involved a prop plane; I didn't think that they even made those anymore!
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