THE SOVIET PRESENCE IS FORMALIZED AND EXPANDEDThe day after their arrival in Cairo, Malashenko’s group received a sober briefing
from their boss at the “Ofis,” the originally British term that stuck to their headquar-
ters. It was still “a 6-room apartment that we all could barely squeeze into.”
Lashchenko ... laid out the operative-strategic situation and the state of UAR armed forces,
which had in effect disintegrated ... All command echelons and headquarters had been
shown up as incapable of directing combat operations. The most important reasons for the
defeat were the low morale and combat quality of the troops and the defeatist attitude of
the officer corps after the Israeli first strike. The Eg yptian armed forces are at the rehabilita-
tion stage.Though Brezhnev had claimed in July that the Arabs had already received more
hardware than they had lost, the chief adviser put the effective replacement figure at
30–60 percent, but “the manpower is incapable of using [even] the existing weapons
and equipment, and the officers too are poorly prepared.” The advisers, therefore, had
to insist on their expanded capacity. “Lashchenko ... described in great detail the tasks
and working methods for the advisers, based on the personal experience and work of
our specialists, ... demanding that we study them and observe them strictly.”
This, however, would not be a simple assignment. Nasser spent an unprecedented
full hour at the Soviet embassy’s Revolution Day reception on 7 November and went
out of his way to welcome the top advisers; Ambassador Vinogradov was “overjoyed”
at their arrival. But at the Eg yptian General Staff ’s Operations Directorate, to which
Malashenko was attached, he found only useless papers being produced. When the
Soviets tried to improve procedures, the Eg yptian officers “treated us suspiciously and
in my view were not very friendly.”
The director, Major-General Talaat, answered all my questions evasively, knew nothing
and was concerned only about being summoned to the chief of staff and facing his ques-
tions. ... he had to be told what to do every day ... the directorate had no approved war
plan ... I tried to point out to Talaat the difference between the advisers and the previous
specialists ... we ostensibly worked out our cooperation, but he tried to overload us with
superfluous work.Malashenko had to remind him of the new dispensation: “we’re advisers, not white
slaves that can be kept busy with unnecessary tasks and do all the work for you.” There
was a slight improvement only after Chief of Staff Abdel Moneim Riad intervened in
favor of the Russians.
On the other hand, Riad stalled for two or three weeks before he let Malashenko
inspect the canal front. In July, Zakharov had departed with a promise that “we will
not leave Eg ypt in the lurch,” and outlined a classic Soviet three-tiered defense array
along the canal.^66 Malashenko specifies that by July Lashchenko had submitted the
detailed plan to the Eg yptian high command. But three months later, Malashenko
was still “depressed by his first view of the desert” and the actual state of affairs.