Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces

by Viktor Suvorov

part in the attack are nearby and are doing the same. But the group

  commander does not know everything. He does not know that spetsnaz

  detachment 2-S-2, under the command of a major known as `Uncle Kostya', has

  landed in the area of St David's. Detachment 2-S-2 consists of fifty-six

  men, fifteen lightweight motorcycles and six small cars with a considerable

  supply of ammunition. The detachment's task is to move rapidly, using

  secondary and forest roads and in some cases even the main roads, and reach

  the Forest of Dean to organise a base there. The Forest of Dean is a

  wonderful place for spetsnaz operations. It is a hilly area covered with

  dense forest. At one time it was an important industrial region. There are

  still the remains of the abandoned coal mines and quarries and railway

  tunnels, although it is a long time since there was any railway there. Once

  firmly established in that forest `Uncle Kostya' can strike out in any

  direction: nearby there is a nuclear power station, the Severn bridge, a

  railway tunnel beneath the river Severn, the port of Bristol, the GCHQ

  government communications centre at Cheltenham, very important military

  factories also at Bristol and a huge munitions dump at Welford. The GRU

  believes that it is somewhere in this area that the Royal Family would be

  sent in the event of war, and that would be a very important target.

  The four spetsnaz groups which have taken part at the outset in the

  operation against Brawdy depart immediately after the attack and make their

  different ways to the Forest of Dean where they can join up with Uncle

  Kostya's detachment. Shakespeare knows nothing about this. The large-scale

  raid on Brawdy and Shakespeare's continued activity in the following days

  and nights ought to give the enemy the impression that this is one of the

  main areas of operation for spetsnaz.

  Meanwhile spetsnaz group 2-C-41, of twelve men, has been landed at

  night near the port of Felixstowe from the catamaran Double Star. The boat

  is sailing under the Spanish flag. The group has left the catamaran in the

  open sea and swum ashore in aqualungs. There it has been met by a spetsnaz

  agent recruited some years previously. He has at the GRU's expense bought a

  small motorcycle shop, and his shop has always had available at least

  fifteen Japanese motorcycles all ready for the road, along with several sets

  of leather jackets, trousers and crash helmets. The group (containing some

  of the best motorcyclists in the Soviet Union) changes its clothes, its

  weapons are wrapped in tarpaulin, the spetsnaz agent and his family are

  killed and their bodies hidden in the cellar of their house, and the

  motorcycle gang then rushes off at a great speed along the A45 in the

  direction of Mildenhall. Its task is to set up automatic Strela-Blok

  anti-aircraft missiles in the area of the base and knock out one of the most

  important American air bases in Europe, used regularly by F-111s. Afterwards

  the group is to make for the nearest forest and link up with spetsnaz

  detachment 2-C-5.

  The group commander does not know that at the same time and not far

  away from him ten other spetsnaz groups, each working independently, are

  carrying out similar operations against the American military bases at

  Woodbridge, Bentwaters and Lakenheath.

  ___

  The motor yacht Maria was built in Italy. In the course of a decade she

  has changed owners several times and visited the oceans of the world until

  she was sold to some wealthy person, after which she has not been seen for

  several years in any port in the world. But when the international situation

  takes a turn for the worse the Maria appears in the North Sea sailing under

  a Swedish flag. After some modernisation the appearance of the yacht has

  changed somewhat. On receiving the signal `393939' the Maria travels at full

  speed towards the coast of Great Britain. When it is inside British

  territorial waters and within range of Fylingdales Moor the yacht's crew

  removes hatch covers to reveal two BM-23 Katusha-like multi-barrelled

  missile-launchers. The sailors quickly aim the weapon at the gigantic

  spheres and fire. Seventy-two heavy shells explode around the installation,

  causing irreparable harm to the early warning system. The sailors on the

  yacht put on their aqualungs and jump overboard. For two hours the yacht

  drifts close to the shore without a crew. When the police clamber aboard,

  she explodes and sinks.

  ___

  For operations against NATO forces in Central Europe the Soviet high

  command has concentrated an immensely powerful collection of forces

  consisting of the 1st and 2nd Western Fronts in East Germany, the 3rd

  Western Front in Poland, the Central Front in Czechoslovakia and the Group

  of Tank Armies in Belorussia. This makes fifteen armies altogether,

  including the six tank armies. On the right flank of this collection of

  forces there is the combined Baltic Fleet. And deep in Soviet territory

  another five fronts are being built up (fifteen armies altogether) for

  supporting attack.

  On 12 August at 2300 hours spetsnaz battalions drawn from the seven

  armies of the first echelon cross the frontier of Western Germany on

  motorised hang-gliders, ordinary gliders and gliding parachutes. Operating

  in small groups, each battalion strikes at the enemy's radar installations,

  concentrating its efforts on a relatively narrow sector so as to create a

  sort of corridor for its planes to fly through. Apart from these seven

  corridors, another one of strategic importance is created. It was for this

  purpose that back in July the 13th spetsnaz brigade arrived in East Germany

  from the Moscow military district on the pretext that it was a military

  construction unit and based itself in the Thuringer Wald. The brigade is now

  split into sixty groups scattered about the forests of the Spessart and

  Odenwald hills, and faced with the task of destroying the anti-aircraft

  installations, especially the radar systems. In the first wave there are

  altogether 130 spetsnaz groups dropped with a total of some 3300 troops.

  Two hours after the men have been dropped, the Soviet air force carries

  out a mass night raid on the enemy's anti-aircraft installations. The

  combined blow struck by the air force and spetsnaz makes it possible to

  clear one large and several smaller corridors through the anti-aircraft

  defence system. These corridors are used immediately for another mass air

  attack and a second drop of spetsnaz units.

  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 Bruggen 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 inderstands 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 in

  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.

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  APPENDICES

  Appendix A-D Skipped (diagrams)

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  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 o
snaz 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 Umarov 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.