personal opinion

Second, the Russian hardware is not economically viable in the long run. They are selling hardware for, virtually, food. Um. No actually. The Russians make a tidy profit. A Soyuz rocket costs about $5 million to manufacture, the Proton about $6 million. You need to add on the cost of the launch pad, fuel and so forth, but that's not going to be more than 2x more. And they sell launches for $60-85 million. That means that they have a profit of more than 50% which ain't bad. In fact they've been sandbagging for several years; there was a cartel arrangement that they weren't allowed to undercut American launchers by more than a certain percentage; the cartel arrangement has come to its agreed end point in the last couple of years.
The fees barely cover the costs and leave no funds to further develop the technology. Were it not for surplus military hardware the Russsians would have no program at all. Um. No actually. Neither the Soyuz nor the Proton are surplus military hardware. In fact the Proton never, ever was military; although some of the predecessors were ICBMs; much like most of the American launchers (including Apollo). Such sales erode the market base for a true 'space DC-3'. Just as American airplane builders had to wait for the JN-4s of WW1 to wear out, so will the new space technology builders. The sooner the military-funded designs die off the better for all of us. That's a laugh. American launches fall into two camps, more or less: