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

The senior command of spetsnaz consists of colonels and generals of the

  GRU who have graduated from one of the main faculties of the

  Military-Diplomatic Academy -- that is, the first or second faculties, and

  have worked for many years in the central apparat of the GRU and in its

  rezidenturas abroad. Each one of them has a first-class knowledge of a

  country or group of countries because of working abroad for a long time. If

  there is a possibility of continuing to work abroad he will do so. But

  circumstances may mean that further trips abroad are impossible. In that

  case he continues to serve in the central apparat of the GRU or in an

  Intelligence directorate of a military district, fleet or group of forces.

  He then has control of all the instruments of intelligence, including

  spetsnaz.

  I frequently came across people of this class. In every case they were

  men who were silent and unsociable. They have elegant exteriors, good

  command of foreign languages and refined manners. They hold tremendous power

  in their hands and know how to handle authority.

  Some however, are men who have never attended the Academy and have

  never been in countries regarded as potential enemies. They have advanced

  upwards thanks to their inborn qualities, to useful contacts which they know

  how to arrange and support, to their own striving for power, and to their

  continual and successful struggle for power which is full of cunning tricks

  and tremendous risks. They are intoxicated by power and the struggle for

  power. It is their only aim in life and they go at it, scrambling over the

  slippery slopes and summits. One of the elements of success in their life's

  struggle is of course the state of the units entrusted to them and their

  readiness at any moment to carry out any mission set by the higher command.

  No senior official in spetsnaz can be held up by considerations of a moral,

  juridical or any other kind. His upward flight or descent depends entirely

  on how a mission is carried out. You may be sure that any mission will be

  carried out at any cost and by any means.

  ___

  I often hear it said that the Soviet soldier is a very bad soldier

  because he serves for only two years in the army. Some Western experts

  consider it impossible to produce a good soldier in such a short time.

  It is true that the Soviet soldier is a conscript, but it must be

  remembered that he is conscript in a totally militarised country. It is

  sufficient to remember that even the leaders of the party in power in the

  Soviet Union have the military ranks of generals and marshals. The whole of

  Soviet society is militarised and swamped with military propaganda. From a

  very early age Soviet children engage in war games in a very serious way,

  often using real submachine guns (and sometimes even fighting tanks), under

  the direction of officers and generals of the Soviet Armed Forces.

  Those children who show a special interest in military service join the

  Voluntary Society for Co-operation with the Army, Air Force and Fleet, known

  by its Russian initial letters as DOSAAF. DOSAAF is a para-military

  organisation with 15 million members who have regular training in military

  trades and engage in sports with a military application. DOSAAF not only

  trains young people for military service; it also helps reservists to

  maintain their qualifications after they have completed their service.

  DOSAAF has a colossal budget, a widespread network of airfields and training

  centres and clubs of various sizes and uses which carry out elementary and

  advanced training of military specialists of every possible kind, from

  snipers to radio operators, from fighter pilots to underwater swimmers, from

  glider pilots to astronauts, and from tank drivers to the people who train

  military doctors.

  Many outstanding Soviet airmen, the majority of the astronauts

  (starting with Yuri Gagarin), famous generals and European and world

  champions in military types of sport began their careers in DOSAAF, often at

  the age of fourteen.

  The men in charge of DOSAAF locally are retired officers, generals and

  admirals, but the men in charge at the top of DOSAAF are generals and

  marshals on active service. Among the best-known leaders of the society were

  Army-General A. L. Getman, Marshal of the Air Force A. I. Pokryshkin,

  Army-General D. D. Lelyushenko and Admiral of the Fleet G. Yegorov.

  Traditionally the top leadership of DOSAAF includes leaders of the GRU and

  spetsnaz. At the present time (1986), for example, the first deputy chairman

  of DOSAAF is Colonel-General A. Odintsev. As long ago as 1941 he was serving

  in a spetsnaz detachment on the Western Front. The detachment was under the

  command of Artur Sprogis. Throughout his life Odintsev has been directly

  connected with the GRU and terrorism. At the present time his main job is to

  train young people of both sexes for the ordeal of fighting a war. The most

  promising of them are later sent to serve in spetsnaz.

  When we speak about the Soviet conscript soldiers, and especially those

  who were taken into spetsnaz, we must remember that each one of them has

  already been through three or four years of intensive military training, has

  already made parachute jumps, fired a sub-machine gun and been on a survival

  course. He has already developed stamina, strength, drive and the

  determination to conquer. The difference between him and a regular soldier

  in the West lies in the fact that the regular soldier is paid for his

  efforts. Our young man gets no money. He is a fanatic and an enthusiast. He

  has to pay himself (though only a nominal sum) for being taught how to use a

  knife, a silenced pistol, a spade and explosives.

  After completing his service in spetsnaz the soldier either becomes a

  regular soldier or he returns to `peaceful' work and in his spare time

  attends one of the many DOSAAF clubs. Here is a typical example: Sergei

  Chizhik was born in 1965. While still at school he joined the DOSAAF club.

  He made 120 parachute jumps. Then he was called into the Army and served

  with special troops in Afghanistan. He distinguished himself in battle, and

  completed his service in 1985. In May 1986 he took part in a DOSAAF team in

  experiments in surviving in Polar conditions. As one of a group of Soviet

  `athletes' he dropped by parachute on the North Pole.

  DOSAAF is a very useful organisation for spetsnaz in many ways. The

  Soviet Union has signed a convention undertaking not to use the Antarctic

  for military purposes. But in the event of war it will of course be used by

  the military, and for that reason the corresponding experience has to be

  gained. That is why the training for a parachute drop on the South Pole in

  the Antarctic is being planned out by spetsnaz but to be carried out by

  DOSAAF. The difference is only cosmetic: the men who make the jump will be

  the very same cutthroats as went through the campaigns in Hungary,

  Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. They are now considered to be civilians, but

  they are under the complete control of generals like Odintsev, and in

  wartime they will become the very same spetsnaz troops as we now
label

  contemptuously `conscripts'.

  --------

  Chapter 8. The Agent Network

  Soviet military intelligence controls an enormous number of secret

  agents, who, in this context, are foreigners who have been recruited by the

  Soviet intelligence services and who carry out tasks for those services.

  They can be divided into two networks, the strategic and the operational.

  The first is recruited by the central apparat of the GRU and the GRU's

  numerous branches within the country and abroad. It works for the General

  Staff of the armed forces of the USSR and its agents are recruited mainly in

  the capitals of hostile states or in Moscow. The second is recruited by the

  intelligence directorates of fronts, fleets, groups of forces, military

  districts and the intelligence departments of armies and flotillas,

  independently of the central GRU apparat, and its agents serve the needs of

  a particular front, fleet, army and so on. They are recruited mainly from

  the territory of the Soviet Union or from countries friendly to it.

  The division of agents into strategic and operational networks does not

  in any way indicate a difference in quality. The central apparat of the GRU

  naturally has many more agents than any military district group of forces,

  in fact more than all the fleets, military district armies and so forth put

  together. They are, broadly speaking, people who have direct access to

  official secrets. Nevertheless the operational network has also frequently

  obtained information of interest not just to local commanders but also to

  the top Soviet leadership.

  During the Second World War the information coming from the majority of

  foreign capitals was not of interest to the Soviet Union. Useful information

  came from a very small number of locations, but however vital it was, it was

  insufficient to satisfy wartime demands. Consequently the operational

  network of the armies, fronts and fleets increased many times in size during

  the war and came to be of greater importance than the strategic network of

  agents of the central GRU apparat. This could happen again in another

  full-scale war if, contrary to the military and political consensus on

  future wars, it proved to be long drawn-out.

  The spetsnaz agent network, an operational one, works for every

  military district, group of forces, fleet and front (which all have in

  addition an information network). Recruitment of agents is carried out

  mainly from the territory of the Soviet Union and states friendly to it. The

  main places where spetsnaz looks out for likely candidates for recruitment

  are: major ports visited by foreign tourists; and among foreign students.

  Spetsnaz examines the correspondence of Soviet citizens and of citizens of

  the satellite countries and listens in to the telephone conversations in the

  hope of coming across interesting contacts between Soviet and East European

  citizens and people living in countries that spetsnaz is interested in.

  Usually a foreign person who has been recruited can be persuaded to recruit

  several other people who may never have been in the Soviet Union or had any

  contact with Soviet citizens. It sometimes happens that spetsnaz officers

  turn up in somebody else's territory and recruit agents. Most of them do not

  have diplomatic cover and do not recruit agents in the capital cities, but

  drop off from Soviet merchant and fishing vessels in foreign ports and

  appear in the foreign country as drivers of Soviet trucks, Aeroflot pilots

  or stewards of Soviet trains. One proven place for recruiting is a Soviet

  cruise ship: two weeks at sea, vodka, caviar, the dolce vita, pleasant

  company and the ability to talk without fearing the local police.

  If the reader had access to real dossiers on the secret agents of

  spetsnaz he would be disappointed and probably shocked, because the agents

  of spetsnaz bear no resemblance to the fine, upstanding, young and handsome

  heroes of spy films. Soviet military intelligence is looking for an entirely

  different type of person as a candidate for recruitment. A portrait of an

  ideal agent for spetsnaz emerges something like this: a man of between

  fifty-five and sixty-five years of age who has never served in the army,

  never had access to secret documents, does not carry or own a weapon, knows

  nothing about hand-to-hand fighting, does not possess any secret equipment

  and doesn't support the Communists, does not read the newspapers, was never

  in the Soviet Union and has never met any Soviet citizens, leads a lonely,

  introspective life, far from other people, and is by profession a forester,

  fisherman, lighthouse-keeper, security guard or railwayman. In many cases

  such an agent will be a physical invalid. Spetsnaz is also on the lookout

  for women with roughly the same characteristics.

  If spetsnaz has such a person in its network, that means: a. that he is

  certainly not under any suspicion on the part of the local police or

  security services; b. that in the event of any enquiries being made he will

  be the last person to be suspected; c. that there is practically nothing by

  which any suspicions could be confirmed, which in turn means that in

  peacetime the agent is almost totally guaranteed against the danger of

  failure or arrest; d. that in the event of war he will remain in the same

  place as he was in peacetime and not be taken into the army or the public

  service under the wartime mobilisation.

  All this gives the spetsnaz agent network tremendous stability and

  vitality. There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, and in the rules

  of intelligence gathering there are a lot of exceptions. You can come across

  many different kinds of people among the agents of spetsnaz, but still

  spetsnaz tries mainly to recruit people of just that type. What use are they

  to the organisation?

  The answer is that they are formidably useful. The fact is that the

  acts of terrorism are carried out in the main by the professional athletes

  of spetsnaz who have been excellently trained for handling the most

  difficult missions. But the spetsnaz professionals have a lot of enemies

  when they get into a foreign country: helicopters and police dogs, the

  checking of documents at the roadside, patrols, even children playing in the

  street who miss very little and understand a lot. The spetsnaz commandos

  need shelter where they can rest for a few days in relative peace, where

  they can leave their heavy equipment and cook their own food.

  So the principal task of spetsnaz agents is to prepare a safe hiding

  place in advance, long before the commandos arrive in the country. These are

  some examples of hiding places prepared by spetsnaz agents. With GRU money a

  pensioner who is actually a spetsnaz agent buys a house on the outskirts of

  a town, and close to a big forest. In the house he builds, quite legally, a

  nuclear shelter with electric light, drains, water supply and a store of

  food. He then buys a car of a semi-military or military type, a Land Rover

  for example, which is kept permanently in the garage of the house along with

  a good store of petrol. With that the agent's work is done. He lives

>   quietly, makes use of his country house and car, and in addition is paid for

  his services. He knows that at any moment he may have `guests' in his house.

  But that doesn't frighten him. In case of arrest he can say that the

  commando troops seized him as a hostage and made use of his house, his

  shelter and car.

  Or, the owner of a car dump takes an old, rusty railway container and

  drops it among the hundreds of scrap cars and a few motorcycles. For the

  benefit of the few visitors to the scrapyard who come in search of spare

  parts, the owner opens a little shop selling Coca-Cola, hot dogs, coffee and

  sandwiches. He always keeps a stock of bottled mineral water, tinned fish,

  meat and vegetables. The little shop also stocks comprehensive medical

  supplies.

  Or perhaps the owner of a small firm buys a large, though old yacht. He

  tells his friends that he dreams of making a long journey under sail, which

  is why the yacht always has a lot of stores aboard. But he has no time to

  make the trip; what's more, the yacht is in need of repair which requires

  both time and money. So for the moment the old yacht lies there in a

  deserted bay among dozens of other abandoned yachts with peeling paint.

  Large numbers of such places of refuge have been arranged. Places that

  can be used as shelters include caves, abandoned (or in some cases working)

  mines, abandoned industrial plants, city sewers, cemeteries (especially if

  they have family vaults), old boats, railway carriages and wagons, and so

  forth. Any place can be adapted as a shelter for the use of spetsnaz

  terrorists. But the place must be very well studied and prepared in advance.

  That is what the agents are recruited for.

  This is not their only task. After the arrival of his `guests' the

  agent can carry out many of their instructions: keeping an eye on what the

  police are doing, guarding the shelter and raising the alarm in good time,

  acting as a guide, obtaining additional information about interesting

  objects and people. Apart from all that an agent may be recruited specially

  to carry out acts of terrorism, in which case he may operate independently

  under the supervision of one person from the GRU, in a group of agents like

  himself, or in collaboration with the professionals of spetsnaz who have

  come from the Soviet Union.