I am almost finished reading the third volume of the Churchill biography by Manchester/Reid and came across this. As the Red Army savagely raped and pillaged its way to Berlin, one of Tito's associates, Milovan Djilas, expressed his dismay over the behavior of the Soviets. Stalin replied: "You have imagined the Red Army to be ideal, and it is not ideal, nor can it be...we have opened up our penitentiaries and stuck everybody in the army". So, yes, it was an army of thugs led by thugs who didn't care what happened to the enemy or their own soldiers. Heck, the more of his own people that were lost in the war meant that many less for Stalin ro purge or send to the Gulag.
The Soviets were at the end of the rope on manpower in 1945. Teenage boys started to appear in the ranks.
The wastage rate in the Red Army was astronomical. They lost a million men taking Berlin