WAS USSR MILITARY REALLY SO CHAOTIC?

I don´t know much of russian military but this story seemed largely unreal. While this is happening in the last years of USSR as a country, in Perestroika times, russian military always had the fame of being extremelly harsh, something that still happens today. It would be expect that conscripts in soviet times would be more disciplinated and be more feared of their drill sargeant (and anyone) than just bored ( he seemed more like a buffon ). While seems this was a VDV/paratroopers platoon, maybe volunteers, I think no way they could choose to not be sent to Afeganisthan, nowadays in west armies soldiers can ask to be placed in some mission but NOT where they don´t want to go, and I think that wouldn´t happen in soviet times where it could be sentenced with death. And being a more elite troop the platoon was full of cry-babies and indisciplinated recruits that should be speled out of the corp and sent as regular soldiers to serve in Afeganisthan as "cannon fodder".
The inteligence officer was clearly a KGB/Spetznaz, but all the others where shock troops engaged in patrol roles, not special forces type. Being VDV there´s no way ( besides the blue berets ) to be seen any kind of parajumping, in fact they whore more of the regular infantry type...