NOTES
pp. [21–24]^
appears to reflect heightened tension along the Warsaw Pact–NATO front as the Six-Day
War approached its climax, rather than preparations to transfer Bulgarian troops to the
Middle East—for which they would have to move east to Black Sea ports. In August,
according to recently released Bulgarian documents, “the largest operational and tactical
exercise in the Balkans area in the 1960s was carried out ... with a code name ‘RODOPI’
... The exercise was not planned in advance, and was intended ... as a ‘reaction’ to the newly
established Middle East situation.” Jordan Baev, “Bulgaria and the Middle East Conflict
during the Cold War Years,” Washington: CWIHP, 2006, pp. 25–6, http://lib.sudigital.
org/record/503/files/SUDGTL-BGCW-2010-294-ENG.pdf- Baev, “Bulgaria and the Middle East,” p. 28. By January 1968, NATO discerned a “fairly
clear Soviet tendency to leave physical presence [in Eg ypt] to Soviet advisers and experts
alone.” Wolfgang Behrends, NATO department head, West German Foreign Ministry,
quoted in Nitzan Hadas, Israel embassy, Bonn, to Research Department, Foreign Ministry,
26 January 1968, ISA HZ-4095/20. - Egorin is identified by Vladimir Sakharov, a KGB operative in Alexandria at the time, as
an agent of GRU (military intelligence) and its top authority on Eg ypt. Vladimir Sakharov,
High Treason, New York: Ballantine, 1980, pp. 230–1, 246. - Egorin, Egipet, p. 178.
- AC, Sharon testimony, Part 1, pp. 54–5.
- Egorin, Egipet, p. 178.
- Ivan Lyutkin, “40 let nazad ...,” Krasnaya Zvezda, 16 June 2007.
- Egorin, Egipet, p. 178. “Plugging into the lightning rod” is a euphemism for heavy
drinking. - Lashchenko, “Zapiski,” p. 45.
- Zolotarev et al., Rossiya, p. 185; Encyclopedia of the Black Sea Fleet, http://flot.sevastopol.
info/software/index.html. Likewise, Krymsky Komsomolets was “based in Eg yptian ports
in June 1967,” http://flot.sevastopol.info/ship/desant/krimsk_komsom.htm - A similar raid on Alexandria failed, too, but stories spread after the war that the Eg yptian
Navy had been “devastated” by these operations; Sunday Times service, “Daring Israeli
Frogman Tactics Outlined,” Calgary Herald, 27 June 1967, p. 9. - Aleksandr A. Kharchikov, “Na moryakh sredi zemli,” Sovetskaya Rossiya, 26 July 2003,
http://www.sovross.ru/old/2003/081/081_4_1.htm. Kharchikov, in post-USSR times
a “bard” with a strong Russian-nationalist bent and nostalgia for the Soviet period, did
three Mediterranean tours. - Alexandr Rozin, “Sovetsky VMF v sderzhivanii i prekrashchenii ‘chestidnevnoy voiny’ v
1967g.,” in A.O. Filonik (ed.), Blizhniy Vostok: Komandirovka na voynu, Sovetskie voen-
nye v Egipte, Moscow: Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University, 2009, p. 188.
This account puts the marine unit on board the Krimsky Komsomolets. “BDK-6,” on which
it is located in Zolotarev’s list, was the appellation of this ship until 1970. - Foxbats, pp. 176, 257n46.
- A.B. Morin, “Bol’shye desantnye korabli tipa ‘Voronezhsky Komsomolets’ pr. 1171,” Taifun,
47 (2005); Arkhiv fotografiy korabley russkogo i sovetskogo VMF, http://navsource.
narod.ru/photos/07/383/index.html