Max the Mad Russian
Hands off Ukraine! Feet too
Nevertheless, that was true. If one interested in career first and only then in some wargames riding some mighty machines over or beneath the waves, the Russian navy offers many slots for shore duty from ensign to captain. Not staff corps, not RL, just several trades. My own, "communication means", allowed near half of my class did just so - shore comm centers and staffs from the beginning. You cannot reach flag rank without time at sea, but who cares if your best ambitions are just O-6 with full pension? Moreover, if that communication installation is located on Kamchatka Pen, you will have twice time rate (year for two) and the same income that classmates who went submarines.
Or small combattant, in our case really small - a corvettes. There are five or six officer billets on a guided missile corvette of Russian navy, and no one of them is of comm trade (i.e. all: radio, crypto, nets and so on). So as the corvettes organized into divisions (four to ten ships), there is small division staff, where the dividion's comm officer has the O-3 billet. He is not in the ship's company, he is staff officer, but somtimes went to sea to qualify the crew, for a week at best, and no overseas deployments at all. Four years there, then a staff of a brigade, similar job but O-4 billet. Then a staff of a squadron, O-5. And a senior faculty officer in some naval college, O-6. That is a typical career of some SWO types from the Soviet time. There isn't such thing like "patriotism", just a career in the navy. A lot of pragmatists are there, indeed.
