I think Karponosov really does have a point. The choreography is all old fashioned, like they all think they are competing against Anissina and Peizerat. With the exception of Yanovskaya and Mozgov, all the Russian teams have problem with lifts. The posture on almost everyone, Stepanova and Egor Bazin especially, is terrible. The coaches don't seem to understand where they are losing levels. And there is no excuse since almost every group, especially Zhulin's, has at least one tech specialist working with them.
The only coach of a Russian team that I think really doesn't understand levels is Marina - the others are doing fine and responding to what feedback they get from the judges. M/K got great tech scores on the GP, but are let down by bad programs, her poor skating and their lack of expression. S/B should have fixed their twizzle issue straight after Finlandia, when even a fan with an ISU tech handbook could have told you about the different edge issue, but at least it was done for the 2nd half of the season. I/Z had issues on lifts and the spin on the GP, but once they had time after CoR to make adjustments, they did it, and when they missed the level of the curve lift in the FD it was due to a timing problem, not the element not being set up for a level 4. They were also one of only a handful of teams to get level 4 on both paso sequences at any point in the season.
The only ones who didn't make changes and consistently had the same problems were S/K - Victoria never getting into position fast enough for the variation to count for a feature on their twizzles, Nikita always checking the rotation on the lift which unfortunately for them was in both the SD & the FD, the problem of their curve lift barely curving and so potentially invalidating the straight line lift which followed it, etc etc. And all you got from Marina was "they look great in practice!!" and Nikita saying the judges were just punishing them for the partner splits.
The technical issues were not limited to the Russians either - W/P having twizzle and pattern issues at 4CC & Worlds especially come to mind. So the Russian situation is not great, but they aren't miles behind everyone else. All their teams are also at the point (apart from maybe M/K & B/S, but B/S should be competitive anyway) where they are likely to be making big improvements from season to season, either because they are still very young, like S/B, or because they are in a new team that's still adjusting to each other. On the other hand, C/L peaked in the Olympic season, W/P probably have too, who knows about C/B but I don't see much more untapped potential there. I could see 2 European medals for Russia next season quite easily, and possibly also a world bronze, plus getting the three spots back, so nothing to panic about. They just need to be realistic about what could be expected after all the splits & injuries of last year and focus on where these teams could go with the right support from the fed over the next 3 years.
ETA: I don't think the solution of getting Tchaikovskaia and Tarasova to advise the coaches will help either - TAT's last adventures in dance resulted in the buchering of B/S's birds and Tchaikovskaia hasn't been relevant in dance since the 1980s. At least Alla is a current member of the ISU technical committee so knows what she's talking about. If I was involved I'd be trying to get Igor or Platov involved on the technical side, Klimova who's done great work with the US kids like Edmunds that she's worked with, and Peter Tchernyshev who's shown himself to be able to do really good things within the confines of IJS with K/S. They lost so much talent to North America in the 90s/2000s and they should be trying to get that back.
