Yeah, Ediny tariff on MegaFon is RUR3/min to the US and locally - that's about $0.09/min. According to the MegaFon-Moskva Website, incoming calls are free (Все входящие вызовы Бесплатно). There's an additional 50 kopek charge for the first minute (that didn't exist three years ago). For top-up cards, unless you buy them from MegaFon stores, you'll usually get charged a commission. You'll buy, say, a RUR1000 card but pay RUR1100.

I'm going to Russia in mid-May, so I'll check it out. I arrive at DME at 5:35AM, so I doubt that anything will be open there. Visa registration procedures have changed since 2006, so I don't think to send your passport and migration card off to OVIR (or whatever the new name of the place is) to be stamped anymore. They probably will still check your passport and migration card (they'll have to write down the numbers), but that three-day waiting period may have been eliminated.

I was able to buy a card from an official BeeLine store down near the Yugo-Zapadnaya metro station with a photocopy of my passport, migration card, and a stamped note from my sponsor (which happened to be a division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) called a spravka stating that my passport was being registered. That was a uniquely Russian experience - pick out what you want, get a receipt for it, turn around and pay the cashier 10 feet away to get a stamp on the receipt, turn back around and get the item you paid for by giving the stamped receipt to the salesman. Where else can you experience such inefficiency?