Born in the Grodno province in the family of a rural priest Alexei Nikolaevich and Sofia Alexandrovna (née Pavlovskaya) Lechitsky.

[1] His father graduated from the Lithuanian Theological Seminary in the first category in 1849, was ordained priest on September 14, 1851, and served in the diocese of Grodno.

Plato Lechitsky entered the seminary in the footsteps of his father, but already in 1873, he was dismissed from grade 1 as he failed to appear for the whole academic year.

On March 25, 1877, the young man entered the military service as a private on the rights of self-determining 3rd rank in the 7th grenadier Samogit adjutant general Count Totleben regiment, stationed in Moscow.

November 24, 1898, with his battalion, transformed and renamed the 4th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, was sent as part of a detachment to occupy the Port Arthur fortress.

[2] In 1900, at the opening of hostilities against the Chinese (during the Boxer Rebellion), the 4th East Siberian Rifle Regiment was appointed to the North Manchurian detachment of General Vladimir Viktorovich Sakharov.

Then commanding a separate detachment of 2 companies and 1 hundred security guards of the Chinese Eastern Railway, Lechitsky survived on October 3 a successful battle with boxers near the village of Fonigou, near the city of Kuanchenzi.

When, at the beginning of 1901, an expedition was organized from the troops of the southern Manchurian detachment to eastern Mongolia to the city of Kulo, Lechitsky commanded a convoy aimed at providing an important railway station Node in Kabanzi.

At the very beginning of the Mukden operation, as soon as the Japanese attack was discovered against the Tsinchechen detachment, the commander-in-chief sent Major General Danilov (23rd and 24th regiments) from the 2nd Army to support the brigade, which occupied the night of February 15, 1905, position on the Tsandansky heights, near the village of Kudyaz.

In these positions, until February 23, Lechitsky, together with other parts of General Danilov's detachment, courageously repulsed all the enemy's attacks, until an order was issued to withdraw the 1st Army across the Yellow River.

On May 12, 1905, Lechitsky was promoted to major general for military distinctions, and on August 5 he was appointed commander of the 1st brigade of the 6th East Siberian Infantry Division.

It is noteworthy that Platon Alekseevich did not have a higher military education, because did not graduate from the Nikolaev Academy of the General Staff.

On December 12, 1906, he was bestowed upon him the tunic of the 24th East Siberian Rifle Regiment, and on August 26, 1908, he was appointed commander of the XVIII Army Corps.

On October 5, 1908, he was promoted to lieutenant general (with seniority of February 14, 1909) and on December 23, 1910, he was appointed commander of the forces of the Amur Military District.

During the general offensive of the Southwestern Front, the Ninth Army overturned the opposing enemy, taking September 2, 1914, the Polish city of Sandomierz and creating a bridgehead on the San River to attack Krakow.

For the Battle of Galicia, General Lechitsky was the first in the Great War to receive one of the highest awards of the Russian Army - the St. George's weapon with diamonds.

The counterattack of the Austro-Germans, which followed that same September, forced the 9th Army to retreat and defend itself on the Vistula line in the vicinity of the Ivangorod fortress.

In the battles in front of Ivangorod, Russian troops waited for the defeat of the Germans near Warsaw and on October 13 went on the offensive.

For the hardest battles near Ivangorod and the defeat of the Austrian 1st Army, Platon Alekseevich was awarded the 3rd degree Order of St. George the Emperor who visited the headquarters of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief Emperor "for speeding up the army entrusted to him, crossing the Vistula River from Suliev to New Alexandria inclusively, which was broken "stubborn resistance of the enemy and at the same time captured over 200 officers, 15,000 lower ranks, 24 guns and 36 machine guns."

Given the shortage of shells, Lechitsky's main task was to organize defence and provide troops with rear supplies.

To overcome the positional impasse, his army was entrusted with a complex and responsible operation to circumvent the Austrian defence and attack in Bukovina.

Therefore, Platon Alekseevich issued an order that said: "A frontal attack in the mountains leads to huge losses and still does not give a decisive result, why in all cases rounds should be used and sufficient forces."

Emperor Nicholas II during the next detour of the front visited the sick Lechitsky at the army headquarters in Kamenetz-Podolsk on March 30, 1916.

Russian balloons and aeroplanes regularly flew around their positions, carefully recording the slightest changes that could cause the Austrians to think about preparing an attack.

In many areas, the Austrians stretched the barbed wire to 70 rows, and in some places started a current on it, but a powerful and accurate artillery strike, coordinated with the infantry commanders to the smallest detail, helped break through the enemy's defences.

Lechitsky, however, understood that it was dangerous to leave an unfinished group and base in a large city on the left flank.

The award to the legendary commander for his active participation in the Brusilovsky breakthrough was the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky with swords.

In the same 1916, Emperor Nicholas II, on the proposal of the Protopresbyter of the military and naval clergy George Shchavelsky, awarded the priest Alexy Lechitsky (father of the general) the Order of St. Vladimir of the 4th degree “in retribution of the merits of his son”, and Archbishop Konstantin (Bulychev) of Mogilev and Mstislavsky with blessing The Holy Synod elevated him to the rank of archpriest.

In the fall of 1916, the centre of gravity of the Southwestern Front moved south because Romania entered the war on the side of Russia.

In this situation, P. A. Lechitsky held a front stretched for 320 kilometres for two months, reflecting the violent attacks of two enemy armies.