THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973The departure of Soviet missile crews, five squadrons of fighter aircraft and other air
defense personnel sharply reduce[s] Eg ypt’s capability to defend itself against Israeli air
attack. The Eg yptians may have deluded themselves into believing that they can somehow
get along without Soviet help in this area. ... The Eg yptians have no capability to put forces
across the canal and hold territory for more than a day or so. ... The chances of Eg ypt’s
initiating any major military action have become even smaller than they were before Sadat’s
17 July announcement. Thus it is unlikely that there will be a cross-canal assault or a “war
of attrition.”^34Likewise, “from 17 July onwards, few indeed were the military experts in Israel ...
who believed that Eg ypt was capable of going to war.” But the predominant concept
remained that this was because the Soviet advisers had left, and the carefully culti-
vated confusion between them and the regulars now paid off. Calculating down from
a total “Soviet contingent” of 15,000–20,000 before 17 July, and following “some
sources” whereby “about ten per cent stayed behind,” Sella estimated a decade later
that only “about 1500 to 2000 advisers were left in Eg ypt.”^35 But at about the same
time, calculating up from “the size of local armed forces and intensity of advisory
mission penetration,” Efraim Karsh estimated that in 1970, at the height of Soviet
involvement, there had been 2,300 Soviet advisers (as distinct from troops).^36 Since
only the advisers remained, there was little change in their number, but in view of the
supposed mass “exodus” it now seemed like a mere remnant.
The “expulsion” was thus used to end the direct Soviet military intervention in
Eg ypt without admitting that it ever took place. The deception that enabled this may
have been designed also to prevent Israel from taking advantage of the transitional
period until Eg yptian units completed their takeover of the anti-aircraft array. This
illusion, first created by the mass, simultaneous recall of the advisers to Cairo, would
then hardly be dispelled when the advisers trickled back, unnoticed, to “their” units.
Asked thirty years later how there were advisers’ dependents to be evacuated from
Eg ypt in October 1973 if they had been expelled the previous summer, Gen. Gareev
obfuscated: “everyone cannot leave in one day. In those months, a planned evacuation
went on. Every day someone arrived in Eg ypt, and someone else left. Military–techni-
cal cooperation went on.”^37
Unlike Rytov, the advisers’ boss Okunev completed his two-year tour and was then
replaced by Lt-Gen. Petr Samokhodsky, who also retained the title of “head of the
Soviet forces group.” As will be seen, this title was not empty even after the main body
of Kavkaz troops departed—indeed, it involved considerable activity during the Yom
Kippur War and after.^38