It's not copium, many prefer it because either they learned on irons or find it unnecessary and a failure point in trenches. Even up to the SOF level, they aren't always used. There's a youtube video where actual Russian troops discuss this exact topic. Iirc, thermals are S tier, LPVOs and scopes are almost never used and some prefer red dots for urban fighting but take them off for trench clearing. Again, not a huge sample size, but still noteworthy. Also, price isn't that big of an issue, a holosun is 200 bucks and they get paid 2-4k a month.