THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973sion whereby the Soviets agreed to accept a limited withdrawal ... in exchange for the
resurrection ... of the Third Rogers Plan.”^13 This may have been confirmed when the
Soviets “left unanswered” an Israeli proposal at the end of March to renew the “useful”
talks with Primakov.^14 At the same time—27 March—Kissinger discussed on the tele-
phone with the president how to proceed in the back channel: “K: ... get it done before
the election and brutalize them [the Israelis?] after the election. P: that secret deal still
concerns me. ... K: we have got to get the Soviets out of the Middle East.”^15 But meeting
Dobrynin on 12 April 1972, Kissinger “temporized” on the Middle East and neither of
them referred to it in their reports from a week of intensive discussions before Kissinger
left secretly for the summit’s “dress rehearsal” in Moscow.^16
The transfer of SAM-3s and other Soviet-operated systems to Eg yptian crews was
well in progress before the summit, though it was running into some snags. Lt
Presnukhin, whose missile unit was posted to Nag Hammadi in November 1971, lists
among its main tasks imparting maintenance knowhow to the “Arab contingent”—
who, he recalls, were not particularly enthusiastic or capable, and “frankly, they were
ruining our equipment.”^17 Air Force Maj.-Gen. Aleksandr Vagin, who had recently
ended his service as second-in-command of a Soviet Air Force corps in East Germany,
was dispatched “toward the end of 1971” to Eg ypt as chief adviser to EAF Chief of
Staff Mubarak, initially for a two-year hitch. His main task was overseeing group and
individual training of Eg yptian pilots “to prepare the Eg yptian Air Force for repuls-
ing an Israeli attack.” He recalled thirty years later that he was less than entirely satis-
fied with the results, blaming both the Eg yptians’ capability and their motivation.^18
A recently published Russian account relates that on 13 April 1972, Grechko
received a coded message from Okunev that a recalibration of the SAM-3 systems by
a party of over 100 Soviet technicians had resulted in a complete disabling of Eg ypt’s
air defense array. “Several test launches failed, as the guidance center lost control of
the missile in flight.”
“An Il-18 left ... Moscow with a group of military and civilian experts,” led by the
deputy chief designer Yevgeny Nikiforov:
The stakes were too high in the geopolitical game—the state’s reputation and the honor of
its factories had to be protected. Since their dispatch had been decided urgently, all the
participants were issued passports but without visas. ... This fact would turn out to be a
cruel joke at their expense.At Cairo-West, the select team “quickly discovered that ... their colleagues had not
recalibrated the [SAMs’ radar] stations, because the agreement had somehow omit-
ted this. Also, the Arabs were of the opinion that periodic maintenance was uncalled
for,” and even neglected to replace burnt-out indicator lightbulbs. After two weeks of
corrections by Nikiforov and his team,
special tents, armchairs and drinks were set up at Cairo-West for a big gathering of Okunev,
air defense commander Fahmy, and the ranking officers and advisers. An Il-28 dropped a