Balalaika [Black Lagoon.]

She entered the bar, began to look around carefully.

While some of her actions can be interpreted as attempts to pursue an honorable death in combat for her men, Balalaika's status as a military figure is tempered by her role in the criminal underground. She backed away from engaging with Shane Caxton's American soldiers in combat after Mister Chang reminded her of their unfinished fight. Balalaika opted for a future battle with Chang over a present opportunity to engage the American unit, which she regarded as a foil to her own disgraced Soviet unit, because she wanted to preserve their joint interest to keep the city of Roanapur standing.
Due to the fact that her personal military force, the Vysotniki, is entirely composed of ex-VDV forces, they and Balalaika are at a serious advantage over the other criminal organizations. Specifically, Balalaika, like her men, has military grade training, combat experience and discipline that is unprecedented among the rest of the criminal underworld of Roanapur.
She is also one of the few people to earn the respect of Revy, who calls her "Sis." In turn, Balalaika also seems to hold Rock in high regard, sometimes relying on his knowledge and business skills as well as hiring him as a translator and even teasing him once that he was a "good villain." She is capable of speaking Russian and English as seen when she had Rock translate her English into Japanese during the "Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise" arc.
In her childhood, she took life advice from her uncle, a marshal in the Red Army of the USSR. Balalaika's father had presumably either been condemned by the USSR or fled the country. Due to her father's condemned status, she felt that she had to restore her family's honor. Instead of participating in the shooting competition at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Balalaika joined the Soviet Airborne Forces (Vozdushno-Desantnye Vojska; Russian for "air assault troops"), also known as the VDV.