Spetsnaz Read online

  Another very important element of spetsnaz training is to teach a soldier not to be afraid of blood and to be able to kill. This is more important and more difficult for spetsnaz than for the infantry, for example. The infantry man kills his enemy mainly at a distance of more than a hundred metres and often at a distance of 300 or 400 metres or more. The infantryman does not see the expression on the face of his enemy. His job is simply to take aim correctly, hold his breath and press the trigger smoothly. The infantryman fires at plywood targets in peacetime, and in wartime at people who look at a distance very much like plywood targets. The blood which an infantryman sees is mainly the blood of his dead comrade or his own, and it gives rise to anger and a thirst for revenge. After that the infantryman fires at his enemy without feeling any twinges of conscience.

  The training of a spetsnaz soldier is much more complicated. He often has to kill the enemy at close quarters, looking him straight in the face. He sees blood, but it is not the blood of his comrades; it is often the blood of a completely innocent man. The officers commanding spetsnaz have to be sure that every spetsnaz soldier will do his duty in a critical situation.

  Like fire, blood is a constant attribute of the battle training of a soldier. It used to be thought that a soldier could be accustomed to the sight of blood gradually - first a little blood and then more day by day. But experts have thrown out this view. The spetsnaz soldier’s first encounter with blood should be, they argue, quite unexpected and in copious quantities. In the course of his career as a fighting man there will be a whole lot of monstrous things which will spring up in front of him without any warning at all. So he should get used to being unsurprised at anything and afraid of nothing.

  A group of young spetsnaz soldiers are hauled out of bed at night because of an emergency, and sent in pursuit of a ‘spy’. The worse the weather the better. Best of all when there is torrential rain, a gusty wind, mud and slush. Many kilometres of obstacles - broken-down stairs, holes in walls, ropes across holes and ditches. The platoon of young soldiers are completely out of breath, their hearts beating fast. Their feet slip, their hands are scratched and bruised. Forward! Everyone is bad-tempered - the officers and especially the men. The soldier can give vent to his anger only by punching some weaker fellow-sufferer in the face and maybe getting a kick in the ribs in reply. The area is dotted with ruined houses, everything is smashed, ripped apart, and there’s broken glass everywhere. Everything is wet and slippery, and there are never-ending obstacles with searchlights trained on them. But they don’t help: they only hinder, blinding the men as they scramble over. Now they come to a dark cellar, with the doors ripped off the hinges. Everybody down. Along the corridor. Then there’s water ahead. The whole group running at full tilt without slowing down rushes straight into some sticky liquid. A blinding light flashes on. It’s not water they are in - it’s blood. Blood up to the knees, the waist, the chest. On the walls and the ceiling are chunks of rotten flesh, piles of bleeding entrails. The steps are slippery from slimy bits of brain. Undecided, the young soldiers jam the corridor. Then somebody in the darkness lets a huge dog off its chain. There is only one way out - through the blood. Only forwards, where there is a wide passageway and a staircase upwards.

  Where on earth could they get so much blood? From the slaughter-house, of course. It is not so difficult to make the tank of blood. It can be narrow and not very deep, but it must be twisting and there must be a very low ceiling over it. The building in which the tank of blood is arranged can be quite small, but piles of rotten boards, beams and concrete slabs must be tipped into it. Even in very limited space it is possible to create the impression that you are in an endless labyrinth overflowing with blood. The most important thing is to have plenty of twists and turns, holes, gaps, dead ends and doors. If you don’t have enough blood you can simply use animal entrails mixed with blood. The bottom of the tank must not be even: you must give the learner the possibility of tripping over and going under. But most important is that the first training session should take place with a group of really young soldiers who have joined spetsnaz but are still isolated and have had no opportunity of meeting older soldiers and being warned what to expect. And there’s something else: the tank of blood must not be the final obstacle that night. The greatest mistake is to drive the men through the tank and then bring the exercise to an end, leaving them to clean themselves up and go to bed. In that case the blood will only appear to them as a terrible dream. Keep driving them on over more and more obstacles.

  Exhausting training exercises must be repeated and repeated again, never stopping to rest. Carry on with the exercise throughout the morning, throughout the day. Without food and without drink. In that way the men acquire the habit of not being taken aback by any surprises. Blood on their hands and on their uniforms, blood in their boots - it all becomes something familiar. On the same day there must also be a lot of gunfire, labyrinths with bones, and dogs, dogs and more dogs. The tank of blood must be remembered by the men as something quite ordinary in a whole series of painful experiences.

  In the next training session there is no need to use a lot of blood, but it must be constantly present. The men have to crawl beneath some barbed wire. Why not throw some sheep’s innards on to the ground and the wire? Let them crawl over that and not just along the ground. A soldier is firing from his sub-machine-gun on the firing range. Why not surround his firing position with chunks of rotting meat which is in any case no good for eating? A soldier makes a parachute jump to test the accuracy of his drop. Why not put on his landing spot, face down, a big puppet in spetsnaz uniform with a torn, twisted parachute spattered with pig’s blood? These are all standard tricks in spetsnaz, simple and effective. To increase the effect the instructors are constantly creating situations in which the men are obliged to get blood on their hands. For example, a soldier has to overcome an obstacle by scrambling up a wall. When he reaches up to grab the ridge at the top of the wall he finds it slippery and sticky from blood. He has a choice - either to drop down and break his legs (and maybe his neck) or to hang on tighter with both hands, rest his chin on the filthy sill, shift his grip, pull himself up and jump in through the window. A spetsnaz soldier does not fall. He pulls himself up and, with blood all over him, swearing hoarsely, he carries on his way, onwards, ever onwards.

  Later in the programme come half-joking exercises such as: catch a pregnant cat, open its belly with a razor blade and count how many kittens it has. This is not such an easy exercise as might appear at first. The soldier has no gloves, the cat scratches and he has no one to help him. As an instrument he is allowed to use only a blunt, broken razor blade or razor, and he can easily cut his own fingers.

  The process of familiarising spetsnaz men with the sight and the reality of blood is not in the least intended to make them into sadists. It is simply that blood is a liquid with which they are going to have to work in wartime. A spetsnaz soldier may not be scared of the red liquid. A surgeon works continually with blood and so does the butcher. What would happen if a surgeon or a butcher were suddenly to be afraid of the sight of blood?

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  Every Soviet soldier, wherever he may be serving, must be able to run, to shoot accurately, to keep his weapon clean and in good working order, and carry out the orders of his superiors precisely and quickly and without asking unnecessary questions. If one studies the battle training of Soviet troops one notices that there are common standards for all branches of troops operating in any conditions. This gives the impression that training in the Soviet Army is the same whatever the conditions. This is not quite true. Many of the demands placed on officers and men are standard throughout the Army. Nevertheless, each Soviet military district and each group of forces operates in conditions unique to itself.

  Troops of the Leningrad military district have to operate in very severe northern conditions, and their training takes place in forests, marshes and the tundra of an arctic climate. Troops of the Transcaucasian military distr
ict have to operate in high mountains, while those of the Carpathian and Ural military districts have to operate in medium-high mountains. Even so, the Carpathian district has a mild European climate, while that of the Ural district is wildly different: harsh, with a very hot summer and a very cold winter.

  Every military district and group of forces has a commanding officer, a chief of staff and a head of Intelligence who answer with their heads for the battle-readiness of the troops under their command. But every district and group faces a specific enemy, and its own particular (though absolutely secret) task to perform in the event of war, and its own individual role in the plans of the General Staff.

  One reason that training takes place in situ is that every Soviet frontier district and group of forces has, as a rule, the same natural conditions as the territories in which it will have to fight. Conditions in Karelia differ very little from those in Norway, Sweden and Finland. If troops from the Carpathian military district cross the frontier, they find themselves in a country of high rugged mountains identical to that in which they are permanently stationed. And, if the Soviet troops in Germany cross the frontier, even if there are small differences of terrain and climate, they are at any rate still in Germany.

  Spetsnaz is concentrated at this level of fronts and armies. To make sure that spetsnaz training is carried out in conditions as close as possible to those in which the troops will have to operate the spetsnaz brigades now have special training centres. For example, the natural conditions in the Baltic military district are very similar to those in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, northern Germany and France. The mountainous Altai is strikingly similar to Scotland. In the Carpathians there are places very similar to the French Alps. If troops have to be trained for operations in Alaska and Canada, Siberia is ideal for the purpose, while for operating in Australia spetsnaz units have to be trained in Kazakhstan. The spetsnaz brigades have their own training centres, but a brigade (or any other spetsnaz unit) can be ordered at any moment to operate in an unfamiliar training centre belonging to another brigade. For example, during the ‘Dvina’ manoeuvres spetsnaz units from the Leningrad, Moscow and North Caucasus military districts were transferred to Belorussia to operate there in unfamiliar conditions. The difference in conditions was especially great for the units transferred from the northern Caucasus.

  These transfers are restricted mainly to troops of the internal military districts. It is reckoned that troops which are already located in Germany, Czechoslovakia and the Transcaucasian military districts will remain there in any circumstances, and it is better to train them thoroughly for operations in those conditions without wasting effort on training for every kind of condition. ‘Universal’ training is needed by the troops of the internal districts - the Siberian, Ural, Volga, Moscow and a few others which in the event of war will be switched to crisis points. Courses are also provided for the professional athletes. Every one of these is continually taking part in contests and travelling round the whole country from Vladivostok to Tashkent and Tbilisi to Archangelsk. Such trips in themselves play a tremendous part in training. The professional athlete becomes psychologically prepared to operate in any climate and any circumstances. Trips abroad, especially trips to those countries in which he will have to operate in the event of war, are of even greater assistance in removing psychological barriers and making the athlete ready for action in any conditions.

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  Spetsnaz units are often involved in manoeuvres at different levels and with different kinds of participants. Their principal ‘enemies’ on manoeuvres are the MVD troops, the militia, the frontier troops of the KGB, the government communications network of the KGB and the ordinary units of the armed forces.

  In time of war KGB and MVD troops would be expected to operate against national liberation movements within the Soviet Union, of which the most dangerous is perceived to be the Russian movement against the USSR. (In the last war it was the Russians who created the most powerful anti-Communist army - the ROA). The Ukrainian resistance movement is also considered to be very dangerous. Partisan operations would inevitably break out in the Baltic states and the Caucasus, among others. KGB and MVD troops, which are not controlled by the Ministry of Defence, are equipped with helicopters, naval vessels, tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers, and exercises in which they operate against spetsnaz are of exceptional value to them. But the heads of the GRU are keen on joint manoeuvres for their own reasons. If spetsnaz has years’ experience of operating against such powerful opponents as the KGB and MVD, its performance against less powerful opponents can only be enhanced.

  In the course of manoeuvres the KGB and the MVD (along with the Soviet military units which have to defend themselves) use against spetsnaz the whole gamut of possible means of defence, from total control of radio-communication to electronic sensors, from hunter aircraft provided with the latest equipment to sniffer dogs, which are used in enormous numbers.

  Apart from operating against real Soviet military targets, spetsnaz units go through courses at training centres where the conditions and atmosphere of the areas in which they will be expected to fight are reproduced with great fidelity. Models of Pluto, Pershing and Lance missiles and of Mirage-VI, Jaguar and other nuclear-armed aircraft are used to indicate the ‘enemy’. There is also artillery capable of firing nuclear shells, special kinds of vehicles used for transporting missiles, warheads, and so forth.

  The spetsnaz groups have to overcome many lines of defences, and any group that is caught by the defenders is subject to treatment that is rough enough to knock out of the men any desire to get caught in the future, either on manoeuvres or in a real battle. The spetsnaz soldier constantly has the thought drilled into him that being a prisoner is worse than death. At the same time he is taught that his aims are noble ones. First he is captured on manoeuvres and severely beaten, then he is shown archive film shot in concentration camps in the Second World War (the films are naturally more frightful than what can be perpetrated on manoeuvres), then he is released, but may be seized again and subjected to a repeat performance. It is calculated that, in a fairly short time, the soldier will develop a very strong negative reaction to the idea of being a prisoner, and the certainty that death - a noble death, in the cause of spetsnaz - is preferable.

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  One one occasion following my flight to the West I was present at some large-scale military manoeuvres in which the armies of many Western countries took part. The standard of battle training made a very favourable impression on me. I was particularly impressed by the skilful, I would even say masterly, way the units camouflaged themselves. The battle equipment, the tanks and other vehicles, and the armoured personnel carriers are painted with something that does not reflect the sunlight; the colour is very cleverly chosen; and the camouflaging is painted in such a way that it is difficult to make out the vehicle even at a short distance and its outline mixes in with the background. But every army made one enormous mistake with the camouflaging of some of the vehicles, which had huge white circles and red crosses painted on their sides. I explained to the Western officers that the red and white colours were very easily seen at a distance, and that it would be better to use green paint. I was told that the vehicles with the red cross were intended for transporting the wounded, which I knew perfectly well. That was a good reason, I said, why the crosses should be painted out or made very much smaller. Please be human, I said. You are transporting a wounded man and you must protect him by every means. Then protect him. Hide him. Make sure the Communists can’t see him.

  The argument continued and I did not win the day. Later, other Western officers tried to explain to me that I was simply ignorant of the international agreement about these things. You are not allowed to fire on a vehicle with a red cross. I agreed that I was ignorant and knew nothing about these agreements. But like me, the Soviet soldier is also unaware of those agreements. Those big red crosses are painted so that the Soviet soldier can see them and not f
ire on them. But the Soviet soldier only knows that a red cross means something medical. Nobody has ever told him he was not to shoot at a red cross.

  I learnt about this strange rule, that red crosses must not be shot at, quite by chance. When I was still a Soviet officer, I was reading a book about Nazi war criminals and amongst the charges made was the assertion that the Nazis had sometimes fired on cars and trains bearing a red cross. I found this very interesting, because I could not understand why such an act was considered a crime. A war was being fought and one side was trying to destroy the other. In what way did trains and cars with red crosses differ from the enemy’s other vehicles?

  I found the answer to the question quite independently, but not in the Soviet regulations. Perhaps there is an answer to the question there, but, having served in the Soviet Army for many years and having sat for dozens of examinations at different levels, I have never once come across any reference to the rule that a soldier may not fire at a red cross. At manoeuvres I often asked my commanding officers, some of them very high-ranking, in a very provocative way what would happen if an enemy vehicle suddenly appeared with a red cross on it. I was always answered in a tone of bewilderment. A Soviet officer of very high rank who had graduated from a couple of academies could not understand what difference it made if there were a red cross. Soviet officers have never been told its complete significance. I never bothered to put the question to any of my subordinates.

  I graduated from the Military-Diplomatic Academy, and did not perform badly there. In the course of my studies I listened attentively to all the lectures and was always waiting for someone among my teachers (many of them with general’s braid and many years’ experience in international affairs) to say something about the red cross. But I learnt only that the International Red Cross organisation is located in Geneva, directly opposite the Permanent Representation of the USSR in United Nations agencies, and that the organisation, like any other international organisation, can be used by officers of the Soviet Intelligence services as a cover for their activities.