For sure. And to be clear, while Malinina was born in Novosibirsk her family moved from Novosibirsk to Uzbekistan as a teenager. She actually was living in Tashkent there earlier in her competitive career. Tashkent had at least two rinks, possibly more - one closed in 1991 and the other in March of 1996. She moved to Pervouralsk after that - not sure if she already had a coaching relationship in Russia with Ksenofontov prior. I presume Skorniakov competed for Uzbekistan for the reasons you listed.There are lots of reasons they might have skated for Uzbekistan: the ability to compete, especially after the break-up of the Soviet Union, when they weren't limited to the top 1/2/3 in Russia, for example. That doesn't mean they have any bad feelings at all about Russia or the Russian Fed. I'm guessing at least some of the skaters who were granted passports from Georgia or Azerbaijan or other EU countries don't have hard feelings against their former Feds, and certainly not their former countries.
I didn't insinuate that Malinina & Skorniakov had issues with the Russian Fed. It is known fact that their coach DID