Started as a conscripted private, Eastern Front WWI. Somehow survived. The horrors of the Eastern Front match the Western, at least the troops in the West had half way decent logistics.
Climbed the greasy pole during the 20's and 30's, including surviving Stalin's purges of the Red Army.
WWII and he came into his own. Lead several campaigns and won them, among others the Battle of Kursk and Operation Bagration. Finished off by rolling up the German army on the Eastern Front, giving the USSR most of Eastern Europe.
Stalin feared him as he should have. Zhukov had the Red Army in his holster. When that monster died, Zhukov supported Khrushchev in getting rid of another monster, Beria.
A good thing today's Red Army generals aren't anything like Georgy or we'd have a lot more to talk about than what MTG is up to this week.
They don't maintain themselves. That takes a long line of grunts putting in the never ending duty 'day'.
My late husband, retired munition maint tech, told me that in Nam he put in fourteen hours, six days a week in the long line just getting the gobangs out to the flight line. Then another bunch of grunts had to load and arm them ... very, very carefully. That was in his spare time; otherwise he spent quality time making sure those bad boys were safely asleep until they didn't have to be.
Infantry is known as the Queen of Battle. Fair enough, but logistics is the engine of battle and people are its fuel. If there isn't enough fuel to ensure Her Majesty has her bling, she's got nothing.
for a noncom and a commander who would abandoned one of their own on a battle field. If this is the norm in the Russian army, then they're worse than mercs; they're reavers.