Can I skip or bypass translation when creating a form #options elements? I know I must use t() function in Drupal, but my particular task involves a great number of values in Russian, for which I do not want to enter values as
    t('Moscow')
and then manually translate strings into Russian. There are tons of Russian names and I just want to use them directly. Is it possible?

When I try, my select element options just appear blank.

...
       $form['selected'] = array(
           '#type' =&gt; 'select',
           '#title' =&gt; t('Selected'),
           '#options' =&gt; array(
              0 =&gt; 'Чебоксары',
              1 =&gt; 'Москва',
           ),
...
Using t() is considered a good practice, but it is in no way required by Form API.

Your code should work all right. Be sure your code files are properly saved as UTF-8 and transferred using "binary" mode, to prevent misinterpretation of non-ASCII characters.