Spetsnaz

by Viktor Suvorov

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  Having landed in enemy territory spetsnaz may go straight into battle. Otherwise, it will hide the equipment it no longer needs -boats, parachutes, etc - by either burying them in the ground or sinking them in water. Very often it will then mine the drop area. The mines are laid where the unwanted equipment has been buried. The area is also treated with one of a number of substances which will confuse a dog’s sense of smell. After that, the group (of whatever size) will break up into little sub-groups which depart quickly in different directions. A meeting of the sub-groups will take place later at a previously arranged spot or, if this proves problematic, at one of the several alternative places which have been agreed.

  The drop area is usually the first place where casualties occur. However good the parachute training is, leg injuries and fractures are a frequent occurrence, and when the drop takes place in an unfamiliar place, in complete darkness, perhaps in fog, over a forest or mountains, they are inevitable. Even built-up areas provide their own hazards. Spetsnaz laws are simple and easy to understand. In a case of serious injury the commander cannot take the wounded man with him; doing so would greatly reduce the group’s mobility and might lead to the mission having to be aborted. But the commander cannot, equally, leave the wounded man alone. Consequently a simple and logical decision is taken, to kill the wounded man. Spetsnaz has a very humane means of killing its wounded soldiers - a powerful drug known to the men as ‘Blessed Death'. An injection with the drug stops the pain and quickly produces a state of blissful drowsiness. In the event that a commander decides, out of misguided humanity, to take the wounded man with him, and it looks as if this might jeopardise the mission, the deputy commander is under orders to dispatch both the wounded man and the commander. The commander is removed without recourse to drugs. It is recommended that he be seized from behind with a hand over his mouth and a knife blow to his throat. If the deputy does not deal with his commander in this situation, then not just the commander and his deputy, but the entire group may be regarded as traitors, with all the inevitable consequences.

  As they leave the area of the drop the groups and sub-groups cover their tracks, using methods that have been well known for centuries: walking through water and over stones, walking in each other’s footsteps, and so forth. The groups lay more mines behind them and spread more powder against dogs.

  After leaving the drop zone and having made sure that they are not being followed, the commander gives orders for the organisation of a base and a reserve base, safe places concealed from the view of outsiders. Long before a war GRU officers, working abroad in the guise of diplomats, journalists, consuls and other representatives of the USSR, choose places suitable for establishing bases. The majority of GRU officers have been at some time very closely familiar with spetsnaz, or are themselves spetsnaz officers, or have worked in the Intelligence Directorate of a district or group of forces. They know what is needed for a base to be convenient and safe.

  Bases can be of all sorts and kinds. The ideal base would be a hiding place beneath ground level, with a drainage system, running water, a supply of food, a radio set to pick up the local news and some simple means of transport. I have already described how spetsnaz agents, recruited locally, can establish the more elaborate bases which are used by the professional groups of athletes carrying out exceptionally important tasks. In the majority of cases the base will be somewhere like a cave, or an abandoned quarry, or an underground passage in a town, or just a secluded place among the undergrowth in a dense forest.

  A spetsnaz group can leave at the base all the heavy equipment it does not need immediately. The existence of even the most rudimentary base enables it to operate without having to carry much with it in the way of equipment or supplies. The approaches to the base are always guarded and the access paths mined - the closest with ordinary mines and the more distant ones with warning mines which explode with much noise and a bright flash, alerting any people in the base of approaching danger.

  When the group moves off to carry out its task, a few men normally remain behind to guard the base, choosing convenient observation points from which to keep an eye on it. In the event of its being discovered the guard leaves the location quietly and makes for the reserve base, leaving warnings of the danger to the rest of the group in an agreed place. The main group returning from its mission will visit the reserve base first and only then go to the main base. There is a double safeguard here: the group may meet the guards in the reserve base and so avoid falling into a trap; otherwise the group will see the warning signals left by the guards. The craters from exploded mines around the base may also serve as warnings of danger. If the worst comes to the worst, the guards can give warning of danger by radio.

  A spetsnaz group may also have a moving base. Then it can operate at night, unhampered by heavy burdens, while the guards cart all the group’s heavy equipment along by other routes. Each morning the group meets up with its mobile base. The group replenishes its supplies and then remains behind to rest or to set off on another operation, while the base moves to another place. The most unexpected places can be used by the mobile bases. I once saw a base which looked simply like a pile of grass that had been thrown down in the middle of a field. The soldiers’ packs and equipment had been very carefully disguised, and the men guarding the base were a kilometre away, also in a field and camouflaged with grass. All around there were lots of convenient ravines overgrown with young trees and bushes. That was where the KGB and MVD units were looking for the spetsnaz base, and where the helicopters were circling overhead. It did not occur to anybody that a base could be right in the middle of an open field.

  In some cases a spetsnaz group may capture a vehicle for transporting its mobile base. It might be an armoured personnel carrier, a truck or an ordinary car. And if a group is engaged in very intensive fighting involving frequent changes of location, then no base is organised. In the event of its being pursued the group can abandon all its heavy equipment, having first removed the safety pin from the remaining mines.

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  In order to destroy a target it has first to be located. In the overwhelming majority of cases a spetsnaz operation includes the search for the target. This is understandable, since targets whose location is known and which are not movable can be destroyed easily and quickly with missiles and aircraft. But a great number of targets in present-day fighting are mobile. On the eve of a war or just after it has broken out, government offices are moved out of a country’s capital for secret command posts whose location is known to very few people. New communications centres and lines are brought into operation. Aircraft are removed from stationary aerodromes and dispersed to airfields established in places unknown to the enemy. Many missile installations are moved to new concealed, and carefully guarded, locations. Troops and headquarters are also relocated.

  In these circumstances the search for targets acquires paramount significance for spetsnaz. To be able to find a target of special importance, to identify it, and to know how to distinguish real targets from false ones, become the most important tasks for spetsnaz, more important even than the destruction of the targets. Once a target has been discovered it can be destroyed by other forces - missiles, aircraft, marines, airborne troops. But a target that has not been discovered cannot be destroyed by anyone.

  Because the business of identifying targets is the most important task for spetsnaz it cannot be a separate and independent organisation. It can carry out this task only if it relies on all the resources of the GRU, and only if it can make use of information obtained by agents and from all the various kinds of razvedka -satellite, aircraft, naval, electronic, and so forth.

  Every form of razvedka has its good and its bad side. A complete picture of what is happening can be obtained only by making use of all forms of razvedka in close interaction one with another, compensating for the weaknesses of some forms with the advantages of the others.

  Every officer in charge of razvedka uses s
petsnaz only where its use can give the very best result. When he sends a spetsnaz group behind enemy lines the officer in command already knows a good deal about the enemy from other sources. He knows exactly what the unit is to look for and roughly where it has to look. The information obtained by spetsnaz groups (sometimes only fragmentary and uncertain) can in turn be of exceptional value to the other forms of razvedka and be the starting point for more attentive work in those areas by agents and other services.

  Only with a union of all forces and resources is it possible to reveal the plans and intentions of the enemy, the strength and organisation of his forces, and to inflict defeat on him.

  But let us return to the commander of the spetsnaz group who, despatching it to a particular area, already knows a good deal about the area, the specially important targets that may be found there, and even their approximate location. This information (or as much of it as concerns him) is passed on to the commander of the group and his deputy. The group has landed safely, covered its tracks, established a base and started its search. How should it set about it?

  There are several tried and tested methods. Each target of special importance must have a communications centre and lines of communication leading to it. The group may include experts at radio razvedka. Let us not forget that spetsnaz is the 3rd department and radio razvedka the 5th department of the same Directorate (the Second) at the headquarters of every front, fleet, group of forces and military district. Spetsnaz and radio razvedka are very closely connected and often help each other, even to the point of having radio razvedka experts in spetsnaz groups. By monitoring radio transmissions in the area of important targets it is possible to determine quite accurately their whereabouts.

  But it is also possible to discover the target without the aid of radio razvedka. The direction of receiving and transmitting aerials of tropospheric, radio-relay and other communication lines provides a lot of information about the location of the terminal points on lines of communication. This in turn leads us right up to the command posts and other targets of great importance.

  Sometimes before a search begins the commander of the group will decide by the map which, in his opinion, are the most likely locations for particular targets. His group will examine those areas first of all.

  If the targets are moved, then the roads, bridges, tunnels and mountain passes where they may be seen are put under observation.

  The search for a particular target can be carried out simultaneously by several groups. In that case the officer in charge divides the territory being searched into squares in each of which one group operates.

  Each group searching a square usually spreads out into a long line with tens or even hundreds of metres between each man. Each man moves by the compass, trying to keep in sight of his neighbours. They advance in complete silence. They choose suitable observation points and carefully examine the areas ahead of them, and if they discover nothing they move on to another hiding place. In this way relatively small groups of well-trained soldiers can keep quite extensive areas under observation. Unlike razvedka conducted from outer space or the air, spetsnaz can get right up to targets and view them, not from above, but from the ground. Experience shows that it is much more difficult to deceive a spetsnaz man with false targets than it is a man operating an electronic intelligence station or an expert at interpreting pictures taken from the air or from space.

  Spetsnaz groups have recently begun to make ever greater use of electronic apparatus for seeking their targets. They now carry portable radar, infra-red and acoustic equipment, night-vision sights, and so forth. But whatever new electronic devices are invented, they will never replace the simplest and most reliable method of establishing the location of important targets: questioning a prisoner.

  It may be claimed that not every prisoner will agree to answer the questions put to him, or that some prisoners will answer the questions put by spetsnaz but give wrong answers and lead their interrogators astray. To which my reply is categorical. Everybody answers questions from spetsnaz. There are no exceptions. I have been asked how long a very strong person can hold out against questioning by spetsnaz, without replying to questions. The answer is: one second. If you don’t believe this, just try the following experiment. Get one of your friends who considers himself a strong character to write on a piece of paper a number known only to himself and seal the paper in an envelope. Then tie your friend to a post or a tree and ask him what number he wrote on the paper. If he refuses to answer, file his teeth down with a big file and count the time. Having received the answer, open the envelope and check that he has given you the number written on the paper. I guarantee the answer will be correct.

  If you perform such an experiment, you will have an idea of one of spetsnaz’s milder ways of questioning people. But there are more effective and reliable ways of making a person talk. Everyone who falls into the hands of spetsnaz knows he is going to be killed. But people exert themselves to give correct and precise answers. They are not fighting for their lives but for an easy death. Prisoners are generally interrogated in twos or larger groups. If one seems to know less than the others, he can be used for demonstration purposes to encourage them to talk. If the questioning is being done in a town the prisoner may have a heated iron placed on his body, or have his ears pierced with an electric drill, or be cut to pieces with an electric saw. A man’s fingers are particularly sensitive. If the finger of a man being questioned is simply bent back and the end of the finger squashed as it is bent, the pain is unendurable. One method considered very effective is a form of torture known as ‘the bicycle’. A man is bound and laid on his back. Pieces of paper (or cotton wool or rags) soaked in spirit, eau-de-cologne, etc., are stuck between his fingers and set alight.

  Spetsnaz has a special passion for the sexual organs. If the conditions permit, a very old and simple method is used to demonstrate the power of spetsnaz. The captors drive a big wedge into the trunk of a tree, then force the victim’s sexual organs into the opening and knock out the wedge. They then proceed to question the other prisoners. At the same time, in order to make them more talkative, the principal spetsnaz weapon - the little infantryman’s spade - is used. As spetsnaz asks its questions the blade of the spade is used to cut off ears and fingers, to hit the victims in the liver and perform a whole catalogue of unpleasant operations on the person under interrogation.

  One very simple way of making a man talk is known as the ‘swallow’, well known in Soviet concentration camps. It does not require any weapons or other instruments, and if it is used with discretion it does not leave any traces on the victim’s body. He is laid face down on the ground and his legs are bent back to bring his heels as close as possible to the back of his neck. The ‘swallow’ generally produces a straight answer in a matter of seconds.

  Of course, every method has its shortcomings. That is why a commander uses several methods at the same time. The ‘swallow’ is not usually employed in the early stages of an operation. Immediately after a landing, the commander of a spetsnaz group tries to use one really blood-thirsty device out of his arsenal: cutting a man’s lips with a razor, or breaking his neck by twisting his head round. These methods are used even when a prisoner obviously has no information, the aim being to prevent any possibility of any of the men in the group going over to the enemy. Everyone, including those who have not taken part in the torture, knows that after this he has no choice: he is bound to his group by a bloody understanding and must either come out on top or die with his group. In case of surrender he may have to suffer the same torture as his friends have just used.

  In recent years the KGB, GRU and spetsnaz have had the benefit of an enormous training ground in which to try out the effectiveness of their methods of questioning: Afghanistan. The information received from there describes things which greatly exceed in skill and inventiveness anything I have described here. I am quite deliberately not quoting here interrogation methods used by the Soviet forces, including spetsnaz, in
Afghanistan, which have been reported by thoroughly reliable sources. Western journalists have access to that material and to living witnesses.

  Once it has obtained the information it needs about the targets of interest to it, the spetsnaz group checks the facts and then kills the prisoners. It should be particularly noted that those who have told the truth do have an easy death. They may be shot, hanged, have their throats cut or be drowned. Spetsnaz does not torture anybody for the sake of torture. You come across practically no sadists in spetsnaz. If they find one they quickly get rid of him. Both the easier and the tougher forms of questioning in spetsnaz are an unavoidable evil that the fighting men have to accept. They use these methods, not out of a love of torturing people, but as the simplest and most reliable way of obtaining information essential to their purpose.