the reason why ure cards didnt work in russia is the networks problem that i mentioned above. why i think so?.. because when u called up ure bank they told u that there were no authorisation requests on ure card account. which i'm fairly certain is due to the fact that the local network is not really the best.

it could also have been the corruption of the magnetic stripe on ure card - but that happening to cards that have been kept reasonably well by the user is very very rare.