Glad you asked. I used to use Vkontakte (and Odnoklassniki btw) in the past. Vkontakte has always been in the catchup position with "missing" or "out-of-blue broken" features on a surprisingly consistent basis.
Now, I won't discuss these missing/broken features here. You can look them up on their app's comments section. But I will leave you with one very important thing about privacy:
VK shows when you were online the last time. VK also shows you online if you login without an ability to turn it off! Great for stalkers and unfortunate for those who wouldn't want to receive unwanted conversations.
So I am very reluctant to trust someone, who really doesn't get privacy to build a messaging system with security and privacy in mind. Because we clearly view privacy differently.
By that logic one could state that, for instance, Chrysler cars are "Ford clones" because Ford was the first manufacturer to become very popular and commercially successful.
It is better than Facebook in every possible way.
Have you actually ever used VK (both the site and the mobile apps)?