Soviet Divisions Defecting to NATO

[Mahatatain]

I'm currently putting together the background for a T2k campaign starting in the Ukraine in Spring 2001 and utilising information from the "Bear's Den" supplement.

My thought is to make PCs NATO soldiers who have been captured by the Soviet 27th Tank Division and then freed to join the 27th when the division has switched allegiance and defected to NATO. (In the Bear's Den module one element of the 27th is the "1st Armoured Brigade" which is made up of 100 ex-POW NATO troops).

When discussing this with a couple of friends however one of them pointed out that an entire Soviet division switching to NATO was unrealistic. His point was that the Soviet authorities ensured that the soldiers in a division were from a mixture of ethnic groups from throughout the Soviet Union and that a division would not contain any soldiers (ideally) from the Military District in which is was based (during peacetime). This was designed to make it hard for an entire division to rebel against the Soviet leadership and also meant that should unrest start in a particular region the troops there would be able to quell it without conflicting loyalties to the local population (as they wouldn't be from the local area at all).

Now there are numerous cases in the T2k official history where entire Soviet divisions have changed side and I wondered what other people's opinions were on this. Is it unrealistic to have an entire Soviet division change sides? In the case of the 27th in Bear's Den it has a current strength of 3,400 troops and only lost 300 when it defected to NATO.

Opinions please!