first: may I delibarately destroy one of my figures/cities/buildings, for example to deny my opponent making use of my buildings, or (what's more important) to stop Russians from parasiting on my technologies? rulebook doesn't say a word, but I think it should be possible, say at the beginning of turn (when you place cities);
and second one: Russian ability states, that they may acquire technology known by opponent at no cost - but it refers to Research phase (normal R&D but for free) or it's additional tech gain?