Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Read online

  Chapter 1. Spades and Men Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade.

  When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts to

  dig a hole in the ground beside him. In three minutes he will have dug a

  little trench 15 centimetres deep, in which he can lie stretched out flat,

  so that bullets can whistle harmlessly over his head. The earth he has dug

  out forms a breastwork in front and at the side to act as an additional

  cover. If a tank drives over such a trench the soldier has a 50% chance that

  it will do him no harm. At any moment the soldier may be ordered to advance

  again and, shouting at the top of his voice, will rush ahead. If he is not

  ordered to advance, he digs in deeper and deeper. At first his trench can be

  used for firing in the lying position. Later it becomes a trench from which

  to fire in the kneeling position, and later still, when it is 110

  centimetres deep, it can be used for firing in the standing position. The

  earth that has been dug out protects the soldier from bullets and fragments.

  He makes an embrasure in this breastwork into which he positions the barrel

  of his gun. In the absence of any further commands he continues to work on

  his trench. He camouflages it. He starts to dig a trench to connect with his

  comrades to the left of him. He always digs from right to left, and in a few

  hours the unit has a trench linking all the riflemen's trenches together.

  The unit's trenches are linked with the trenches of other units. Dug-outs

  are built and communication trenches are added at the rear. The trenches are

  made deeper, covered over, camouflaged and reinforced. Then, suddenly, the

  order to advance comes again. The soldier emerges, shouting and swearing as

  loudly as he can.

  The infantryman uses the same spade for digging graves for his fallen

  comrades. If he doesn't have an axe to hand he uses the spade to chop his

  bread when it is frozen hard as granite. He uses it as a paddle as he floats

  across wide rivers on a telegraph pole under enemy fire. And when he gets

  the order to halt, he again builds his impregnable fortress around himself.

  He knows how to dig the earth efficiently. He builds his fortress exactly as

  it should be. The spade is not just an instrument for digging: it can also

  be used for measuring. It is 50 centimetres long. Two spade lengths are a

  metre. The blade is 15 centimetres wide and 18 centimetres long. With these

  measurements in mind the soldier can measure anything he wishes.

  The infantry spade does not have a folding handle, and this is a very

  important feature. It has to be a single monolithic object. All three of its

  edges are as sharp as a knife. It is painted with a green matt paint so as

  not to reflect the strong sunlight.

  The spade is not only a tool and a measure. It is also a guarantee of

  the steadfastness of the infantry in the most difficult situations. If the

  infantry have a few hours to dig themselves in, it could take years to get

  them out of their holes and trenches, whatever modern weapons are used

  against them.

  ___

  In this book we are not talking about the infantry but about soldiers

  belonging to other units, known as spetsnaz. These soldiers never dig

  trenches; in fact they never take up defensive positions. They either launch

  a sudden attack on an enemy or, if they meet with resistance or superior

  enemy forces, they disappear as quickly as they appeared and attack the

  enemy again where and when the enemy least expects them to appear.

  Surprisingly, the spetsnaz soldiers also carry the little infantry

  spades. Why do they need them? It is practically impossible to describe in

  words how they use their spades. You really have to see what they do with

  them. In the hands of a spetsnaz soldier the spade is a terrible noiseless

  weapon and every member of spetsnaz gets much more training in the use of

  his spade then does the infantryman. The first thing he has to teach himself

  is precision: to split little slivers of wood with the edge of the spade or

  to cut off the neck of a bottle so that the bottle remains whole. He has to

  learn to love his spade and have faith in its accuracy. To do that he places

  his hand on the stump of a tree with the fingers spread out and takes a big

  swing at the stump with his right hand using the edge of the spade. Once he

  has learnt to use the spade well and truly as an axe he is taught more

  complicated things. The little spade can be used in hand-to-hand fighting

  against blows from a bayonet, a knife, a fist or another spade. A soldier

  armed with nothing but the spade is shut in a room without windows along

  with a mad dog, which makes for an interesting contest. Finally a soldier is

  taught to throw the spade as accurately as he would use a sword or a

  battle-axe. It is a wonderful weapon for throwing, a single, well-balanced

  object, whose 32-centimetre handle acts as a lever for throwing. As it spins

  in flight it gives the spade accuracy and thrust. It becomes a terrifying

  weapon. If it lands in a tree it is not so easy to pull out again. Far more

  serious is it if it hits someone's skull, although spetsnaz members usually

  do not aim at the enemy's face but at his back. He will rarely see the blade

  coming, before it lands in the back of his neck or between his shoulder

  blades, smashing the bones.

  The spetsnaz soldier loves his spade. He has more faith in its

  reliability and accuracy than he has in his Kalashnikov automatic. An

  interesting psychological detail has been observed in the kind of

  hand-to-hand confrontations which are the stock in trade of spetsnaz. If a

  soldier fires at an enemy armed with an automatic, the enemy also shoots at

  him. But if he doesn't fire at the enemy but throws a spade at him instead,

  the enemy simply drops his gun and jumps to one side.

  This is a book about people who throw spades and about soldiers who

  work with spades more surely and more accurately than they do with spoons at

  a table. They do, of course, have other weapons besides their spades.

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  Chapter 2. Spetsnaz and the GRU

  It is impossible to translate the Russian word razvedka precisely into

  any foreign language. It is usually rendered as `reconnaissance' or `spying'

  or `intelligence gathering'. A fuller explanation of the word is that it

  describes any means and any actions aimed at obtaining information about an

  enemy, analysing it and understanding it properly.

  Every Soviet military headquarters has its own machinery for gathering

  and analysing information about the enemy. The information thus collected

  and analysed about the enemy is passed on to other headquarters, higher up,

  lower down and on the same level, and each headquarters in turn receives

  information about the enemy not only from i
ts own sources but also from the

  other headquarters.

  If some military unit should be defeated in battle through its

  ignorance of the enemy, the commanding officer and his chief of staff have

  no right to blame the fact that they were not well enough informed about the

  enemy. The most important task for every commander and chief of staff is

  that, without waiting for information to arrive from elsewhere, they must

  organise their own sources of information about the enemy and warn their own

  forces and their superior headquarters of any danger that is threatened.

  Spetsnaz is one of the forms of Soviet military razvedka which occupies

  a place somewhere between reconnaissance and intelligence.

  It is the name given to the shock troops of razvedka in which there are

  combined elements of espionage, terrorism and large-scale partisan

  operations. In personal terms, this covers a very diverse range of people:

  secret agents recruited by Soviet military razvedka among foreigners for

  carrying out espionage and terrorist operations; professional units composed

  of the country's best sportsmen; and units made up of ordinary but carefully

  selected and well trained soldiers. The higher the level of a given

  headquarters is, the more spetsnaz units it has at its disposal and the more

  professionals there are among the spetsnaz troops.

  The term spetsnaz is a composite word made up from spetsialnoye

  nazhacheniye, meaning `special purpose'. The name is well chosen. Spetsnaz

  differs from other forms of razvedka in that it not only seeks and finds

  important enemy targets, but in the majority of cases attacks and destroys

  them.

  Spetsnaz has a long history, in which there have been periods of

  success and periods of decline. After the Second World War spetsnaz was in

  the doldrums, but from the mid-1950s a new era in the history of the

  organisation began with the West's new deployment of tactical nuclear

  weapons. This development created for the Soviet Army, which had always

  prepared itself, and still does, only for `liberation' wars on foreign

  territory, a practically insuperable barrier. Soviet strategy could continue

  along the same lines only if the means could be found to remove Western

  tactical nuclear weapons from the path of the Soviet troops, without at the

  same time turning the enemy's territory into a nuclear desert.

  The destruction of the tactical nuclear weapons which render Soviet

  aggression impossible or pointless could be carried out only if the

  whereabouts of all, or at least the majority, of the enemy's tactical

  nuclear weapons were established. But this in itself presented a tremendous

  problem. It is very easy to conceal tactical missiles, aircraft and nuclear

  artillery and, instead of deploying real missiles and guns, the enemy can

  deploy dummies, thus diverting the attention of Soviet razvedka and

  protecting the real tactical nuclear weapons under cover.

  The Soviet high command therefore had to devise the sort of means of

  detection that could approach very close to the enemy's weapons and in each

  case provide a precise answer to the question of whether they were real, or

  just well produced dummies. But even if a tremendous number of nuclear

  batteries were discovered in good time, that did not solve the problem. In

  the time it takes for the transmission of the reports from the

  reconnaissance units to the headquarters, for the analysis of the

  information obtained and the preparation of the appropriate command for

  action, the battery can have changed position several times. So forces had

  to be created that would be able to seek out, find and destroy immediately

  the nuclear weapons discovered in the course of war or immediately before

  its outbreak.

  Spetsnaz was, and is, precisely such an instrument, permitting

  commanding officers at army level and higher to establish independently the

  whereabouts of the enemy's most dangerous weapons and to destroy them on the

  spot.

  Is it possible for spetsnaz to pinpoint and destroy every single one of

  the enemy's nuclear weapons? Of course not. So what is the solution to this

  problem? It is very simple. Spetsnaz has to make every effort to find and

  destroy the enemy's nuclear armament. Nuclear strength represents the teeth

  of the state and it has to be knocked out with the first blow, possibly even

  before the fighting begins. But if it proves impossible to knock out all the

  teeth with the first blow, then a blow has to be struck not just at the

  teeth but at the brain and nervous system of the state.

  When we speak of the `brain' we mean the country's most important

  statesmen and politicians. In this context the leaders of the opposition

  parties are regarded as equally important candidates for destruction as the

  leaders of the party in power. The opposition is simply the state's reserve

  brain, and it would be silly to destroy the main decision-making system

  without putting the reserve system out of action. By the same token we mean,

  for example, the principal military leaders and police chiefs, the heads of

  the Church and trade unions and in general all the people who might at a

  critical moment appeal to the nation and who are well known to the nation.

  By the `nervous system' of the state we mean the principal centres and

  lines of government and military communications, and the commercial

  communications companies, including the main radio stations and television

  studios.

  It would hardly be possible, of course, to destroy the brain, the

  nervous system and the teeth at once, but a simultaneous blow at all three

  of the most important organs could, in the opinion of the Soviet leaders,

  substantially reduce a nation's capacity for action in the event of war,

  especially at its initial and most critical stage. Some missiles will be

  destroyed and others will not be fired because there will be nobody to give

  the appropriate command or because the command will not be passed on in time

  due to the breakdown of communications.

  Having within its sphere an organisation like spetsnaz, and having

  tested its potential on numerous exercises, the Soviet high command came to

  the conclusion that spetsnaz could be used with success not only against

  tactical but also against strategic nuclear installations: submarine bases,

  weapon stockpiles, aircraft bases and missile launching sites.

  Spetsnaz could be used too, they realised, against the heart and blood

  supply of the state: ie. its source and distribution of energy -- power

  stations, transformer stations and power lines, as well as oil and gas

  pipelines and storage points, pumping station and oil refineries. Putting

  even a few of the enemy's more important power stations out of action could

  present him with a catastrophic situation. Not only would there be no light:

  factories would be brought to a standstill, lifts would cease to work, the

  refrigeration installations would be useless, hospitals would find it almost

  impossible to function, blood stored in refrigerators would begin to

  coagulate, traffic lights, petrol pumps and trains would come to a halt,

  computers
would cease to operate.

  Even this short list must lead to the conclusion that Soviet military

  razvedka (the GRU) and its integral spetsnaz is something more than the

  `eyes and ears of the Soviet Army'. As a special branch of the GRU spetsnaz

  is intended primarily for action in time of war and in the very last days

  and hours before it breaks out. But spetsnaz is not idle in peacetime

  either. I am sometimes asked: if we are talking about terrorism on such a

  scale, we must be talking about the KGB. Not so. There are three good

  reasons why spetsnaz is a part of the GRU and not of the KGB. The first is

  that if the GRU and spetsnaz were to be removed from the Soviet Army and

  handed over to the KGB, it would be equivalent to blindfolding a strong man,

  while plugging his ears and depriving him of some other important organs,

  and making him fight with the information he needs for fighting provided by

  another person standing beside him and telling him the moves. The Soviet

  leaders have tried on more than one occasion to do this and it has always

  ended in catastrophe. The information provided by the secret police was

  always imprecise, late and insufficient, and the actions of a blind giant,

  predictably, were neither accurate or effective.

  Secondly, if the functions of the GRU and spetsnaz were to be handed

  over to the KGB, then in the event of a catastrophe (inevitable in such a

  situation) any Soviet commanding officer or chief of staff could say that he

  had not had sufficient information about the enemy, that for example a vital

  aerodrome and a missile battery nearby had not been destroyed by the KGB's

  forces. These would be perfectly justified complaints, although it is in any

  case impossible to destroy every aerodrome, every missile battery and every

  command post because the supply of information in the course of battle is

  always insufficient. Any commanding officer who receives information about

  the enemy can think of a million supplementary questions to which there is

  no answer. There is only one way out of the situation, and that is to make

  every commanding officer responsible for gathering his own information about

  the enemy and to provide him with all the means for defeating his own enemy.

  Then, if the information is insufficient or some targets have not been

  destroyed, only he and his chief of staff are to blame. They must themselves