Suspect some truth to this, looks like the Russian Army is a two tiered Army, Conscripts and Elite forces...The ones eating dogs and raping are Conscripts..Remember during WW2 that over 2 million Soviet soldiers were captured by the Germans...The famed Russian Army is a hollow Tiger..
Good point.
Russians have always favored quantity over quality. Sure, they have some elite units too, but most of the time their whole strategy is to make the enemy run out of bullets before Russia runs out of bodies.