THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973and we must do everything to accomplish our operational mission successfully under
these circumstances.”^45 Although the first “depth bombings” should ostensibly have
been a major concern for Smirnov, he does not mention them at all—much less as the
trigger of his division’s deployment.
The IAF codenamed and numbered its depth-bombing raids Priha (Blossom)
no. 1, no. 2 and so on, with no. 1 on 7 January 1970. So it is easy to determine that
only two more took place before 22 January, and all three targeted distinctly military
installations.^46 Heikal cited among the motives for Nasser’s supposed flight to
Moscow to plead for Soviet intervention the “heavy loss of life” from two of the
“depth bombings”: one on a factory and one on a school. But these occurred, respec-
tively, on 12 February and 8 April.^47 Despite calling Heikal’s overall credibility into
question, Laqueur’s seminal work adopted the Eg yptian propagandist’s anachronistic
version in this matter: “In the bombing of a factory at Abu Zaabal on February 12th,
1970, 88 workers were killed. There were frantic calls for Soviet help, and on January
20th Nasser went to the Soviet capital.”^48 So the trip in January is claimed to have
come in response to an attack in February.
There is no doubt that the Priha operations ultimately had a political and psychologi-
cal effect in Eg ypt. But most of the “depth” raids were made, and their effect came into
major play, after the date when Heikal claims they caused Nasser’s plea and the Soviets’
compliance. Likewise, in respect of Soviet considerations: at the beginning of February
US intelligence intercepted a conversation between Brezhnev and Grechko, in which
the general secretary was “bitter about the Israeli raids and especially ... the strike on the
house of the Soviet advisers, which he implied was deliberate.”^49
Brezhnev’s outrage at these Soviet losses has been held to explain his acceptance of
Nasser’s demands. But his comment in the intercepted talk referred explicitly to the
first Soviet casualties from an Israeli bombing in the Eg yptian hinterland, which
occurred only after Nasser allegedly got what he wanted in Moscow. This was on
28 January, when among several targets of Priha-5, an Israeli bombing destroyed the
three-story building that housed the advisers of the 6th Motorized Division in a
suburb of Cairo. Reports from the Eg yptian capital later spoke of over 100 fatalities,
rather than the three civilians that were killed according to the first official state-
ments. Among the dead were the division commander’s adviser, Col. Ivan Ogibenin,
its air defense commander’s adviser, Col. Nikolay Vlasenko, and an interpreter, Lt
Ziyaddin Yusubov from Azerbaijan; five others were injured.^50 Sadat, according to
some versions of a speech he gave in January 1971, referred to six Soviet missilemen
who were killed the same day, evidently referring to another Priha-5 objective, a SAM
complex at Dahshur, south of Cairo.^51
But the Soviets had begun to suffer casualties before the “depth bombings” even
began. On 7 January, Mikhail Kalchenko, the adviser to an infantry brigade com-
mander, was indeed killed in an Israeli raid, but although the IAF included it in the
same day’s Priha-1, unlike the other objectives of the operation this target was the