THE SOVIET REGULARS MOVE INNastenko arrived at Cairo-West with his dismantled planes on 20 December 1969:
As we prepared to unload our aircraft from the cargo bay, we heard sporadic fire from all
sorts of weapons. A few seconds later we saw two unfamiliar aircraft overfly the base at
15–20 meters. These were two Phantom F-4s. Immediately we saw two SAMs being
launched from a battery nearby. After a while the shooting stopped. We had no time to be
frightened, even though there was no shelter. A technical crew came and told us that one
of the enemy planes had been shot down by a missile, but later it transpired that the
downed plane was an Il-28 [target-]towing craft belonging to the EAF.^11IAF Phantoms had indeed begun buzzing Cairo at low altitude on 4 November.^12
But remarkably, even a year after the ceasefire of August 1970, an IDF tabulation of
the Soviet presence in Eg ypt listed “Soviet-piloted planes” only as late as 31 March.^13
As related to Zhirokhov, in Eg ypt the combat pilots were still, like the previous
advisers, called habir (singular for hubara, as the term was usually rendered
in Russian):
They were housed in comfort but also in silent isolation, their barracks seeming more like
an oasis than part of Eg ypt proper. ... They reported for duty at 0500 hours each day. ... All
EAF bases had been alcohol-free since the early 1960s, but the base where the Soviet per-
sonnel were working was relatively new and did not even include a restaurant. A large
number of such new airbases had been built in Eg ypt in the aftermath of the 1967 war. ...
But for the Soviet officers in Eg ypt these rather rudimentary conditions came as a shock.
... They, like their Eg yptian colleagues, not only ate together but had to cooperate in the
purchase and preparation of meals. ... Plenty of food was, of course, available including any
meat except pork. Once a meal had been prepared, the officers sat on carpets to eat, since
there were not many tables and chairs. Those that could be found were mostly used in the
offices. ... As a result meals were rather relaxed.^14Within a few weeks, the Soviet airmen had to refine the flight pattern for con-
tinuing supply transports. This was also necessitated by the start of Israeli bombings
around Cairo on 7 January—another indication that Kavkaz was already under
way when they commenced. Petr Stavitsky, an English major at the Moscow lin-
guists’ institute, was drafted in January for one of the transports flying Su-7s and
-9s, which were loaded at Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Soviet Far East (and
required two An-12s for each warplane). He and his colleagues boarded the planes
at Tököl, also to communicate with English-speaking traffic controllers. “We set
course to Cairo International [Airport], with which we spoke in English, but at the
same time the crew was talking in Russian with our own controllers at Gianaclis
airbase near Alexandria ... to mislead the overseas intelligence services.” After mak-
ing a sharp turn, landing at Gianaclis and “unloading the merchandise,” the planes
continued to their official destination and the crews were given two days’ leave in
blacked-out, “sullen” Cairo.