You'd have to be full of a cold-blooded pitiless remorseless mood to not sympathize with young Russian men like Sergei Fetisov who decided to serve his country in return for what would seem like a good paycheck of at least RUB 5600 (USD $200).

Russia is scrambling to modernize and rebuild its armed forces to its Soviet-era glory and pride, but it comes at a terrible cost, to the detriment of the servicemen, both draftees and volunteers. Apart from the blessings such as their modern weapons systems, the training and morale of these servicemen are little different from their forebears in the early years of WWI, where the Imperial Russian Army was defeated by their much skilled German counterparts on Eastern Front battlegrounds like Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes (in present-day eastern Poland), or despite the heroic bravado on the Eastern Front in WWII, Soviet Red Army troops suffered heavy casualties against the numerically smaller Wehrmacht as on average 10,000 Soviet troops were killed for every one kilometer advanced westward.

What Mr. Fetisov experienced during his 3 year stint in the Russian Army's 99th Artillery Regiment did not measure up to the training standards provided by the U.S. Army, or even the Chinese PLA. Two combat firing exercises a year? What a soldier's joke...

So if you (perhaps even yourself) have any living relatives who are serving or have served in the armed forces of your country, ask them what basic training do you go through compared to Mr. Fetisov's.

Nonetheless, two russion MIG´s appeared out of nowhere to buzz an aircraft carrier a while back, so maybe there is more to it than meets the eye...