Red Army Spetsnaz
Spetsnaz and nukes I
I noticed this article with interest yesterday:
Elite Russian Intelligence Unit Suffers Major Losses in Ukraine – BBC
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The linked article is in Russian.
The key data here is that:
The exact number of special forces units is classified. But even according to conservative estimates, the elimination of more than 200 fighters can be equivalent to the complete failure of two special forces companies. During the war in Chechnya, the reconnaissance companies of the GRU spetsnaz consisted of 45-70 people. If we take such an assessment as a basis, it is possible that 75% of the reconnaissance companies of the brigade were put out of action.
If the report is to be believed then the very elite of the Russian army, real Spetsnaz soldiers of the 3rd Guards Special Forces Brigade of the Main Directorate of the General Staff have been used in this war for purposes that would amount to deliberate sabotage in the Red Army - ranging from urban assault, holding the line and even in desperate defensive fighting!
This is not what these very very elite units were created for in the Soviet Union!
What were the Spetsnaz in the Red Army?
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.
Suvorov makes it clear on the second page of his book that Spetsnaz are never used on the defensive. The corrupt moron generals of the Russian army may have been junior officers in the Red Army but they never learned this lesson.
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.
Suvorov makes an important note here. Recon troops are generally not supposed to fight enemy units. They can, but are not as heavily armed as the basic troops - whether infantry or armor. A recon unit is the eyes of a larger unit, not its fist. However Spetsnaz are (were) search and kill units. That does not mean stand up fight. A kill unit that cannot destroy a target quickly does not engage in a continued fight and take losses. It fades away, tries later or somewhere else. These soldiers are not meant to be in trenches, on the defensive or vulnerable to normal engagement.
Spetsnaz were supposed to destroy vital and vulnerable enemy units and assets. And a very particular type of asset which has been too much in the news recently: yes nuclear tactical weapons.
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.
In the Red Army, Spetsnaz were above all tactical nuclear weapon hunters. Spetsnaz were to target tactical nuclear weapons and the vulnerable parts of the chain to use them - communications and control included. Destroy the weapon or neutralise it kinetically or by killing its operators or its commander.
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.
We have the command element:
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.
Russia failed in taking out the command elements in Ukraine - presumably the forces that hunted Zelensky would have been Spetsnaz or FSB kill/terrorist teams (osnaz) or both. KGB/FSB Osnaz have similar roles and somewhat duplicate Spetsnaz like the Wehrmacht had the Waffen SS competition.
And the control element:
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.
Russia has been epically bad at destroying Ukrainians communications whether government or commercial. Possibly because it was reliant on Ukrainian communications infrastructure to even wage its initial war or because the infrastructure was too valuable for the thief mindset of Muscovy. Cellphone and internet infrastructure would have been valuable loot for whatever oligarch got them - whether Russian or Ukrainian traitor. By the time Russia started targetting communications infrastructure, Ukraine was already receiving Western backup systems including Starlink… which Elon Musk did NOT donate out of the goodness of his heart. Because he’s a robber bro capitalist, not a saint.
However because the Russian army lacks quality or even mediocre infantry, it seems to be spending a resource that it cannot afford - elite specialised forces - in a role where they will be used up. Regardless of how good a soldier is - artillery and the kinetic deadly steel of war will kill him. Infantry inevitably dies. You do not put a specialised expensive soldier in a grunt situation, that’s the brutal logic of war. Elite recon is not a fighting unit. It is a find and sometimes destroy unit. The ice pick to the brain, not the baseball bat of the Russian grunt army. Definitely not a defensive tool!
And of course… the man running the war is KGB. KGB in charge of Spetsnaz. Suvorov warned about that:
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…
Thirdly, the Soviet secret police, the KGB, carries out different functions and has other priorities. It has its own terrorist apparatus, which includes an organisation very similar to spetsnaz, known as osnaz. The KGB uses osnaz for carrying out a range of tasks not dissimilar in many cases to those performed by the GRU's spetsnaz.
Spetsnaz are still presumably very high quality troops, however one wonders if they are still recruited from the very best as in Soviet times:
Soldiers of the highest category make up the Kremlin guard, the troops protecting the government communications, the frontier troops of the KGB and spetsnaz.
The KGB is now running the Russian state and presumably it creams away the best troops. While the Red Army had prestige and an equal role with the KGB under the party until the dying days of the USSR, nowadays the Russian army is a paramilitary bodyguard force with tanks, nukes and artillery that mostly makes money for its officers. A smart military minded man goes to the KGB units, a fascist who isn’t good enough goes into the army.
Since Spetsnaz were such elite soldiers - after conscription and two years service, a soldier would be Spetsnaz reserve for only five years and after that he would be airborne (nowadays VDV) reserve up to the age of 30 and then regular reserve. Of course even a 40 year old former Spetsnaz would be the cream of any reserves, especially a NCO Spetsnaz who were trained quite differently to normal Red Army sergeants:
Spetsnaz has no distinguishing badge or insignia — officially, at any rate. But unofficially the spetsnaz badge is a wolf, or rather a pack of wolves. The wolf is a strong, proud animal which is remarkable for its quite incredible powers of endurance.
The soldier's credo can be stated in a triple formula: Don't trust, don't beg, don't fear. It is a formula which did not originate in spetsnaz, but in prisons many centuries ago. In it can be seen the whole outlook of the spetsnaz soldier: his practically superhuman contempt for death, and a similar contempt for everybody around him. He does not believe in justice, goodness or humanity. He does not even believe in force until it has been demonstrated by means of a fist, a whip or the teeth of a dog. When it is demonstrated his natural reflex is to challenge it immediately.
The training units of spetsnaz are a place where they tease a recruit like a dog, working him into a rage and then letting him off the leash. It is not surprising that fights inside spetsnaz are a common occurrence. Everyone, especially those who have served in a spetsnaz training unit, bears within himself a colossal charge of malice, just as a thunder cloud bears its charge of electricity. It is not surprising that for a spetsnaz private, or even more so for a sergeant, war is just a beautiful dream, the time when he is at last allowed to release his full charge of malice.
To be continued.
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