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Despite her increasingly active role in the affairs of the state, Queen Sofija did not break one taboo - the exclusive right (or burden, depending on your views) held by men to command troops. The fact that a woman was allowed to order everyone in her Kingdom already raised some eyebrows, and having Sofija lead them into battle would've gone too far. As such, the "Steel Lady" and her husband stayed at Vilnius, reestablishing control over the decayed and disintegrating nation's core, while the royal army that marched to the East was commanded by Kęstutis Mykolas Radvila, a loyal follower of Sofija and a capable military commander who arrived to Klaipėda with her right after the death of Valdislavas II.

In May of 1572, the armies of Lithuania reached Vitebsk, which surrendered without a fight. It wasn't a part of the original cities of the rebellion and was instead taken over by the Russians the previous year, and didn't have many sympathizers for the cause of the Blue Banner. As such, the city and the region around it were spared. However, as the Lithuanians marched deeper and deeper into Russian occupied territory, the more resistance they faced. Ambushes in forests, burned bridges over major rivers and scorched earth were a common sight. Ivan Kratkov's forces were still busy in Novgorod and as such could not participate in defending against the raid of 1572, even though the Lithuanian army was moving very slowly.

In August, Radvila's forces defeated the Leveé of Nizhny Novgorod and Ryazan near Smolensk, inflicting heavy casualties upon the lightly armed and untrained Russians. The path to Tver was clear, but the Lithuanians decided to stop. Autumn was approaching, and the weather this year was incredibly cold compared to the last few winters. Radvila set up camp in Smolensk, after capturing it in the span of one and a half months, and ordered his troops to form raiding parties and ransack the Russian held territory to the north and east. It was an effective way of gathering supplies for the next year's campaign, as well as maintaining the mercenaries in the army without having to pay them. And weaken the rebellion's food supplies, too!

Of course, such actions also lead to massive loss of life in the region, but who cares? Those are just serfs, they don't have feelings, right?

So 1572 was an uneventful year. Both Loyalists and Revolters made some strategic pushes in the region, and the Battle of Smolensk saw a large defeat to the Russians, but overall the situation in the region was in equilibrium. But the slow push and stop of the Lithuanians gave Ivan Kratkov enough time to return to Tver, where his right hand man Boris of Vyazma was still holding the line, and begin organizing defenses in the city. New citizen militias were raised in nearby towns and villages to bolster the ranks of the Russian army, and food supplies were being gathered for a campaign.

This stalemate continued into 1573, but the more time went, the more the scales began tipping towards the Royalists. As soon as the layers of snow melted down, Radvila ordered his troops to raid the countryside to seize the wheat harvest before the enemies could do so first, often resulting in outright attacks on villages that did not want to give away all of their year's worth of produces to the Army. This hawkish attitude towards grain seizure was successful, though, as the Lithuanian army received fresh food supplies that could last many months while the more dove Russians saw their grain stocks run on fumes. On the diplomatic front, Queen Sofija was much more successful than Kratkov, too.

In September of 1573, the representatives of Russian towns and cities gathered in Yaroslavl in the fashion of the French Estates-General, to the All-Russian Council of 1573 (Vserossiiskiy Soviet). Kratkov purposefully avoided naming the Council after any previous institutions from the former Russian principalities - in his point of view, the new Russia will not be a successor of any of the "failed duchies and kingdoms that surrendered to the Litvins", but become it's own modern structure. Here, the leaders of the Great Russian Revolt decided on the future of the Revolution and the shape of the Russian nation that will soon rise. Much like their French contemporaries, the Russians decided in favor of a "nation with no kings". From their point of view, it was the ineffectiveness and internal squabbles of the Russian principalities that led to the beginning of Lithuanian hegemony. Ivan Kratkov heavily pushed in favor of rallying the Ruthenians into the cause as well, despite a lot of opposition from the more conservative and aristocratic parts of the Council, led by Mikhail Romanov and Anastasy Brekhovich, both powerful nobles and magnates.

The October 4th note "To the inhabitants of Kiev, Minsk, Grodno, Polotsk, Chernigov and all of the Rus'" was one of the many defining moments of the Great Russian Revolt. In this letter, Ivan Kratkov spoke to the inhabitants of Ukraine, White Rus' and Black Rus' in an attempt to rally the Ruthenians to revolt against their Lithuanian masters and join the Revolution. If the rest of the Rus' joined the Russians, victory would be certain! But, alas, the response was much different from what the Muscovite noble expected. The response sent by the burghers and nobles of Kiev was the most striking:

"You, Ivan, descendant of the Muscovite kings, may rally your Russians and send them wherever you'd like, but all the injustices you state are far from true. While your people may think the rule of the King is an oppressive one and that you are not fit to live in the Lithuanian nation, we hold ourselves in a far different regard. We rule alongside the Litvins, we hold Lithuania to be as dear as a nation as they do. We have nothing to do with revolting against the Crown - why should we do that when we and the Crown are one and the same?"

Ruthenia did not join the Great Russian Revolt. They saw themselves as followers of a different identity than the Russians. To them, the old Rus' was not worthwhile to fight for, Lithuania is as good of a successor as anything the All-Russian Council could create.

Meanwhile, Queen Sofija ran negotiations with the Kingdom of Sweden, Russia's primary land route to the west for buying weapons and other military equipment. In exchange for allowing the Swedes to annex Reval and the rest of Northern Estonia (which they did so in 1576), Sweden agreed to bolster it's defenses and begin stopping Russian caravans going through Abo (Turku) and seizing any and all wealth that they were carrying. This was followed by Lithuania organizing an offensive towards Pskov and Novgorod, with a detachment organized out of mercenaries and freshly recruited units, 11 000 soldiers strong. Both of these cities were captured in 1573, despite heavy fighting from the Russian city militias in both of them. The Revolt's touch with the rest of the world was cut off and in a very desperate time, too. The army of the Kingdom of Lithuania was increasing every day, Sofija could afford practically running her country into total war if it meant a higher chance of victory, while in Russia, arming the city militias with modern weapons had become practically impossible. The countryside was nearing a famine, too, there were reports of epidemic outbreaks in some areas, collecting taxation or even feeding the men was getting tough.

However, even with those problems, the Russians managed to survive the summer of 1573 more or less intact. Then winter came. And probably in the worst time for both countries, the Lithuanian Regiment began an offensive towards Tver.

Kęstutis Mykolas Radvila knew that the Russians were running low on food and supplies - how could he not? Was it not his army's actions that drained the opponent's supply and prevented them from getting new stocks? Even though it meant risking a famine in the region?

Meanwhile, Kratkov could not afford being a sitting duck. If he and his Russian Leveé ended up besieged in Tver, only the people would suffer. Even for the citizens themselves, there were far from enough food stocks in the city to survive with a full stomach - and what happens when you add 20 000 hungry men to the mix? This was a question of logistics, not a battlefield choice. The only chance that the Russians had was beating the Lithuanians on the battlefield and storming into Ruthenia proper, hopefully inspiring them to join the Revolt. And then breaking through Novgorod to regain a window to the West, or if that didn't work, then reaching the Kiev region, where the Russians could safely reach the Turkish empire and buy supplies there, if possible. The possibility of a resumption of hostilities between Lithuania and Visegrad also floated around.

With these hopes that even they knew would be nigh impossible to reach, the 20 000 men strong Russian army, led by Ivan Kratkov and Boris of Vyazma, flying the light blue banners of the Revolt, marched out of Tver, marching though frozen rivers, dead and looted farms, fruitless forests... before finally, on January 15th, 1574, they met the 26 000 men strong army led by Kęstutis Radvila on the outskirts of the tiny estate village of Sychyovka...