Spetsnaz

by Viktor Suvorov

  Simultaneously, advance detachments of the seven armies cross the frontier and advance westwards.

  At 0330 hours on 13 August the second wave of spetsnaz forces is dropped from Aeroflot aircraft operating at very low heights with heavy fighter cover.

  The Central Front drops its spetsnaz brigade in the heavily wooded mountains near Freiburg. The brigade’s job is to destroy the important American, West German and French headquarters, lines of communication, aircraft on the ground and anti-aircraft defences. This brigade is, so to speak, opening the gates into France, into which will soon burst several fronts and a further wave of spetsnaz.

  The 1st and 2nd Western Fronts drop their spetsnaz brigades in Germany to the west of the Rhine. This part of West Germany is the furthest away from the dangerous eastern neighbour and consequently all the most vulnerable targets are concentrated there: headquarters, command posts, aerodromes, nuclear weapon stores, colossal reserves of military equipment, ammunition and fuel.

  The spetsnaz brigade of the 1st Western Front is dropped in the Aachen area. Here there are several large forests where bases can be organised and a number of very tempting targets: bridges across the Rhine which would be used for bringing up reserves and supplying the NATO forces fighting to the east of the Rhine, the important air bases of Brüggen and Wildenrath, the residence of the German government and West Germany’s civil service in Bonn, important headquarters near München-Gladbach, and the Geilenkirchen air base where the E-3A early-warning aircraft are based. It is in this area that the Soviet high command plans to bring into the battle the 20th Guards Army, which is to strike southwards down the west bank of the Rhine. The spetsnaz brigade is busy clearing the way for the columns of tanks which are soon to appear here.

  The spetsnaz brigade of the 2nd Western Front has been dropped in the Kaiserslautern area with the task of neutralising the important air base and the air force command posts near Ramstein and Zweibrücken and of destroying the nuclear weapons stores at Pirmasens. The place where the brigade has been dropped is where, according to the plan of the Soviet high command, the two arms of the gigantic pincer movement are to close together: the 20th Guards Army advancing from the north and the 8th Guards Tank Army striking from Czechoslovakia in the direction of Karlsruhe. After this the second strategic echelon will be brought into action to inflict a crushing defeat on France.

  At the same time the Soviet high command understands that to win the war it has to prevent the large-scale transfer of American troops, arms and equipment to Western Europe. To solve the problem the huge Soviet Northern Fleet will have to be brought out into the Atlantic and be kept supplied there. The operations of the fleet will have to be backed up by the Air Force. But for the fleet to get out into the Atlantic it will have to pass through a long corridor between Norway and Greenland and Iceland. There the Soviet fleet will be exposed to constant observation and attack by air forces, small ships and submarines operating out of the fjords and by a huge collection of radio-electronic instruments and installations.

  Norway, especially its southern part, is an exceptionally important area for the Soviet military leaders. They need to seize southern Norway and establish air and naval bases there in order to fight a battle for the Atlantic and therefore for Central Europe. The Soviet high command has allotted at least one entire front consisting of an airborne division, considerable naval forces and a brigade of spetsnaz. But airlifting ammunition, fuel, foodstuffs and reinforcements to the military, air and naval bases in Norway presents great problems of scale. So there have to be good and safe roads to the bases in southern Norway. Those roads lie in Sweden.

  In the past Sweden was lucky: she always remained on the sidelines in a conflict. But at the end of the twentieth century the balance of the battlefield is changing. Sweden has become one of the most important strategic points in the world. If war breaks out the path of the aggressor will lie across Sweden. The occupation of Sweden is made easier by the fact that there are no nuclear weapons on its territory, so that the Soviet leaders risk very little. They know, however, that the Swedish soldier is a very serious opponent - thoughtful, disciplined, physically strong and tough, well armed, well acquainted with the territory he will have to fight over, and well trained for action in such terrain. The experience of the war against Finland teaches that in Scandinavia frontal attacks with tanks do not produce brilliant results. It requires the use of special tactics and special troops: spetsnaz.

  And so it goes on, all over the world. In Sweden the capital city is reduced to a state of panic by the murder of several senior government figures and arson and bombing attacks on key buildings and ordinary civilians. In Japan, American nuclear bases are destroyed and chemical weapons used on the seat of government. In Pakistan, a breakaway movement in Baluchistan province, instantly recognised by the Soviet Communist Party, asks for and receives direct military intervention from the USSR to protect its fragile independence: Soviet-controlled territory extends all the way from Siberia through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean.

  It may not even need a third world war for the Soviet Union to occupy Baluchistan. The Red Army may be withdrawing from Afghanistan, but knowing what we know about Soviet strategy and the uses to which spetsnaz can be put, such a withdrawal can be seen as a useful public relations exercise without hindering the work of spetsnaz in any way. With a spetsnaz presence in Baluchistan, the Politburo could be reaching very close to the main oil artery of the world, to the Arab countries, to Eastern and Southern Africa, to Australia and South-east Asia: territories and oceans that are practically undefended.

  Appendices

  Appendix E

  The part the Soviet athletes play

  Below are a number of examples of the very close relationship between the sporting and military achievements of Soviet athletes. Vladimir Myagkov. In the Soviet ski championships in 1939 Myagkov put up an exceptionally good time over the 20-kilometre distance, and became Soviet champion at that distance. During the war he was called into the Army and put in charge of a small unit of athletes which came directly under the Intelligence directorate of the front. He was later killed in fighting behind enemy lines. He was the first of the top Soviet athletes to be made a Hero of the Soviet Union, in his case posthumously. The tasks that Myagkov’s sports unit was carrying out, the circumstances of his death and the act for which he was made a Hero remain a Soviet state secret to this day.

  Porfiri Polosukhin. A Red Army officer before the war, he held world records at parachute jumping. He had been an instructor training special troops for operations on enemy territory. During the war he continued to train parachutists for spetsnaz units of ‘guard minelayers’. He was often behind the enemy’s lines, and he developed a method of camouflaging airfields and of communicating with Soviet aircraft from secret partisan airfields. This original system operated until the end of the war and was never detected by the enemy, as a result of which connection by air with partisan units, especially with spetsnaz and osnaz units, was exceptionally reliable. After the war many a soldier from special troops trained by Polosukhin became world and European parachute champions. Dmitri Kositsyn. Before the war he headed the skating department in one of the State Institutes of Physical Culture. It was supposed to be a civilian institute, but the teachers and many of the students had military rank. Kositsyn was a captain and had some notable achievements to his credit in sport, having established a number of Soviet records. During the war he commanded a special unit known as ‘Black Death’. From that ‘civilian’ institute, in the first week of war alone, thirteen such units were formed. They engaged in active terrorist work in support of the Red Army, and the speed with which the units were formed suggests that long before the war all the members of the units had been carefully screened and trained. Otherwise they would not have been sent behind the lines. Kositsyn’s unit acquired a name as the most daring and ruthless of all the formations on the Leningrad front.

  Makhmud Umarov. During the Second World War Um
arov was a soldier in an independent spetsnaz mine-laying battalion. He was several times dropped with a group of men behind enemy lines. He had two professions: he was a crack shot, and a doctor. After the war he was an officer in the Intelligence directorate of the Leningrad military district. He continued to have two professions, and as a doctor-psychiatrist he received an honorary doctorate for theoretical work. As a crack shot he became European and world champion; in fact, he was five times European champion and three times world champion. He won two Olympic silver medals for pistol shooting, in Melbourne and in Rome. After the resurrection of spetsnaz he served as an officer in that organisation, where both his professions were valued. Thanks to his sporting activities Lieutenant-Colonel Umarov visited many countries of the world and had extensive connections. In 1961 Makhmud Umarov suddenly disappeared from the medical and sporting scenes. There is some reason to believe that he died in very strange circumstances.

  Yuri Borisovich Chesnokov. A man of unusual physical strength and endurance, he took part in many kinds of sport. He was particularly successful at volleyball: twice world champion and Olympic champion. Chesnokov’s physical qualities were noticed very early and as soon as he finished school he was taken into the Academy of Military Engineering, although he was not an officer. From that time he was closely involved in the theory and practice of using explosives. Apart from an Olympic gold medal he has another gold medal for his work on the technique of causing explosions. Chesnokov is now a spetsnaz colonel.

  Valentin Yakovlevich Kudrevatykh. He joined the paramilitary DOSAAF organisation when he was still at school. He took up parachute jumping, gliding and rifle shooting at the same time. In May 1956 he made his first parachute jump. Two years later, at the age of eighteen, he had reached a high level at parachute jumping and shooting. In 1959 he was called into the army, serving in the airborne forces. In 1961 he set five world records in one week in parachute sport, for which he was promoted to sergeant and sent to the airborne officers’ school in Ryazan. After that he was sent to spetsnaz and put in command of some special women’s units. He had under his command the most outstanding women athletes, including Antonina Kensitskaya, to whom he is now married. She has established thirteen world records, her husband fifteen. He made parachute jumps (often with a women’s group) in the most incredible conditions, landing in the mountains, in forests, on the roofs of houses and so forth. Kudrevatykh took part in practically all the tests of new parachute equipment and weapons. Along with a group of professional women parachutists he took part in the experimental group drop from a critically low height on 1 March 1968. Then, as he was completing his 5,555th jump, he got into a critical situation. Black humour among Soviet airborne troops says that, if neither the main nor the reserve parachute opens, the parachutist still has a whole twenty seconds to learn to fly. Kudrevatykh did not learn to fly in those last seconds, but he managed with his body and the unopened parachutes to slow his fall. He spent more than two years in hospital and went through more than ten operations. When he was discharged he made his 5,556th jump. Many Soviet military papers published pictures of that jump. As usual Kudrevatykh jumped in the company of professional women parachutists. But there are no women in the Soviet airborne divisions. Only in spetsnaz.

  After making that jump Kudrevatykh was promoted to full colonel.

  Appendix F

  The Spetsnaz Intelligence Point (RP-SN)

  Imagine that you have graduated from the 3rd faculty (operational intelligence) of the Military-Diplomatic Academy of the General Staff. If you have passed out successfully you will be sent to one of the twenty Intelligence directorates (RUs), which are to be found in the headquarters of military districts, groups of forces and fleets.

  On the first day I spent at the Military-Diplomatic Academy I realised that diplomacy is espionage and that military diplomacy is military espionage. Successful completion of the 3rd faculty of the Military-Diplomatic Academy means serving in one of the Intelligence directorates, or in subordinate units directly connected with the recruitment of foreign agents and managing them.

  Imagine you have been posted to the Intelligence Directorate of the Kiev military district. Kiev is without doubt the most beautiful city in the Soviet Union, and I have heard it said more than once by Western journalists who have visited Kiev that it is the most beautiful city in the world.

  So you are now in the enormous building housing the headquarters of the Kiev military district. At different times all the outstanding military leaders of the Soviet Union have worked in this magnificent building: Zhukov, Bagramyan, Vatutin, Koshevoi, Chuikov, Kulikov, Yakubovsky and many others. The office of the officer commanding the district is on the second floor. To the right of his office are the massive doors to the Operational Directorate. To the left are the no less massive doors to the Intelligence Directorate. It is a symbolic placing: the first directorate (battle planning) is the commanding officer’s right hand, while the second directorate (razvedka) is his left. There are many other directorates and departments in the headquarters, but they are all on other floors.

  Your first visit to the Intelligence Directorate at the district headquarters takes place, of course, in the company of one of the officers. Otherwise you would simply not be admitted.

  Before entering the headquarters you must call at the permit office and produce your authority. You are given a number to phone and an officer comes to escort you. The permit office examines your documents very carefully and issues you with a temporary pass. The officer then leads you along endless corridors and up numerous stairs. You must be ready at every turn to produce your permit and officer’s identity card. Your documents are checked many times before you reach the district’s head of razvedka.

  Now you are in the general’s huge office. Facing you is a major-general, the head of razvedka for the Kiev military district. You introduce yourself to him: ‘Comrade general, Captain so-and-so reporting for further duty.’

  The general asks you a few questions, and as he talks with you about trivialities he decides your fate. There are a number of possibilities. Perhaps he doesn’t take to you and so decides not to take you on. You will be posted to the district Personnel Directorate and will never again have anything to do with Intelligence work. Or he may like you but not very much. In that case he will send you for reconnaissance work on lower floors to serve in a division or regiment. You will be working in razvedka, but not with the agent network.

  If you really please him several paths will be open to you. The razvedka of a military district is a gigantic organisation with a great deal of work to do. Firstly, he can post you to the headquarters of one of three armies to work in the headquarters’ Intelligence department, where you will be sent on to an intelligence post (RP) to recruit secret agent-informers to work for that army.

  Secondly, he can leave you in the Intelligence directorate for work in the second (agent network) or the third (spetsnaz) department. Thirdly, he can post you to one of the places where the recruitment of foreigners to work for the Kiev military district is actually taking place. There are two such places: the Intelligence centre (RZs) and the spetsnaz Intelligence point (RP spetsnaz).

  The general may ask you for your own opinion. Your reply must be short: for example - I don’t mind where I work, so long as it is not at headquarters, preferably at recruitment. The general expects that sort of reply from you. Intelligence has no need of an officer who is not bursting to do recruiting work. If someone has got into Intelligence work but is not burning with desire to recruit foreigners, it means he has made a mistake in his choice of profession. It also means that the people who recommended him for Intelligence work and spent years training him at the Military-Diplomatic Academy were also mistaken.

  The general asks his final question: what kind of agents do you want to recruit - for providing information or for collaborating with spetsnaz? Every intelligence officer at the front and fleet level must know how to recruit agents of both kinds. It is, you say, all
the same to you.

  ‘All right,’ the general says, ‘I am appointing you an officer in the spetsnaz Intelligence point of the 3rd department of the Second Directorate of the headquarters of the Kiev military district. The order will be issued in writing tomorrow. I wish you well.’

  You thank the general for the trust placed in you, salute smartly, click your heels, and leave the office. The escorting officer awaits you at the exit. From here, without any permits, you come out into a little courtyard, where there is always a little prison van waiting. The door slams behind you and you are in a mousetrap. Facing you is a little opaque window with a strong grille over it. No use trying to look out. The van twists and turns round the city’s streets, often stopping and changing direction, and you realise that it is stopping at traffic lights. At last the van drives through some huge gates and comes to a halt. The door is opened and you step out into the courtyard of the penal battalion of the Kiev military district. It is a military prison. Welcome to your new place of work.

  * * *

  The ancient city of Kiev has seen conquerors from all over the world pass down its streets. Some of them razed the city to the ground; others fortified it; then a third lot destroyed it again. The fortifications around the ruined and burnt-out city of Kiev were built for the last time in 1943 on Hitler’s orders. On the approaches to Kiev you can come across fortifications of all ages, from the concrete pillboxes of the twentieth century to the ruins of walls that were built five hundred years before the arrival of Batu Khan.