THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973The Soviet EW systems’ failure to protect Tolokonikov’s divizyon aroused suffi-
cient concern to reinforce these spetsnaz radio-technical intelligence crews in Eg ypt.
On the morrow of the 18 July battle, Sgt Viktor Rogozhinsky’s unit in Crimea was
called urgently onto the parade ground to announce a spetskomandirovka (special
mission) to an unidentified friendly country, for which six officers and five service-
men were to be selected. One officer refused to go; he was not punished, but his
promotion was halted. The group was sent to Nikolaev, where it joined an assembled
complement of 350 for dispatch to Eg ypt.^4
But in sum, the SAMs’ success against the Phantoms could only buttress Eg yptian
and Soviet conviction that Israel would be powerless to resist further advance of the
missile shield toward the canal. On 23 July Nasser announced his acceptance of the
US ceasefire proposal. The Soviet media indicated that in his Moscow talks he had
received approval for this move.^5 But Nasser served notice that the SAMs would be
advanced regardless of the ceasefire, even though the same day Dobrynin confirmed
to Rogers that both the Soviets and the Eg yptians accepted a contrary provision of
the US proposal: “[Rogers said:] we assume that a military standstill as part of the
cease-fire is also acceptable to the Soviet Union. Dobrynin responded affirmatively,
adding, ‘Yes, of course.’ It was his understanding that Foreign Minister Riad’s state-
ment to the Secretary covered this point.”^6
Dobrynin may not have been personally aware of it, but this “understanding”
proved to be disingenuous, and its violation would doom the Rogers Plan. Kissinger
would then reportedly deny, in a promptly leaked off-the-record briefing, that there
had been a full Eg yptian “commitment” to the standstill and confirmed only an
“understanding.” Other sources attributed it merely to tacit Eg yptian acquiescence
in an unsigned paper that Donald Bergus, head of the US interests section in Eg ypt,
had left on Foreign Minister Riad’s desk.^7
Nasser declared that failure by Israel to accept full withdrawal from Sinai within
the ceasefire’s three-month duration would restart his military efforts to regain the
territory. To critics in Eg ypt, he explained that accepting Rogers’s proposal was the
only way to deny Israel the additional Phantoms that would suffice to prevent a canal
crossing.^8 Fearing the same, Israel balked at Rogers’s proposals. The direct Soviet–
Israeli engagements continued.
B. Inter-service rivalry draws the Soviet MiGs into picking a fight ...
Envy of the zenitchiki’s achievement, however costly, motivated more aggressive tactics
on the part of the MiG-21 squadrons. Aleksandr Akimenkov—then among the young-
est pilots in the Soviet force—described in his memoir the resentment his superiors felt
that no one gave the Soviet squadron at Beni Suef credit for deterring Israeli raids in the
Nile Delta. They felt pressed for time to score a tangible achievement comparable to the
SAMs’, as they were told that “talks had begun about a ceasefire.”