THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973some Soviet experts may well ... have returned recently from their summer holidays and of
course, as Sadat has always said, a number of technicians particularly on the air defence side
have a continuing job to do under arrangements pre-dating the Soviet withdrawal. ... To
the best of our knowledge, the Russian club mentioned by Bulloch never closed.Some of the Soviets had returned with families—indicating long-term postings. Still,
he was “pretty convinced that the current Whitehall estimate of between 400 and 1200
Soviet military advisers/technicians in Eg ypt is much too high”—which actually con-
firmed Bulloch’s lower figure.^31 Beaumont aptly noted that “the Eg yptians themselves
have not done much to help matters by consistently blurring the distinction between
‘advisers’ and ‘experts.’” But he was evidently taken in himself, since he described the
advisers as formerly constituting “the bulk of the Soviet military presence here.” His
“considered view” was still “that there are no Russians attached in any capacity to the
Eg yptian navy, and probably few Russians, if any, attached to the army.”
Though Beaumont confirmed that Soviet technicians were maintaining the SAM
array, he reported no Soviet personnel involved in operating the SAM-3 batteries that
were handed over to Eg ypt.^32 The Soviets themselves hardly made such a distinction.
Mikhail Ryabov, a military interpreter, had returned to Eg ypt for a second tour of
duty before the “expulsion” and remained there until August 1973 with a SAM main-
tenance outfit. It was attached to the Eg yptian III Army Corps “in the trenches on
the Suez Canal, engaged in improving the combat readiness of the troops and plan-
ning an offensive operation across a water obstacle ... as part of the strategic objective
which they accomplished in the October 1973 War.”^33
Beaumont insisted that, as a Beirut paper had claimed, all the Soviet SAM-6 mis-
siles had been removed from Eg ypt and that none had been returned. But the New
York Times soon reported from US “military and diplomatic sources” that “the Soviet
Union has recently shipped about 60 advanced surface-to-air missiles to Eg ypt.”^34
Israeli intelligence also reported that SAM-6 deliveries to Eg ypt (as distinct from
deployment of Soviet-manned batteries), which had been agreed upon in February
1972, actually began in August. But this was not considered to have replaced attack
aircraft as the “key” element that Eg ypt still lacked for an offensive.^35
Beaumont’s assessment whereby all Soviets were gone from the Eg yptian Navy
went further than GRU station chief Ivliev volunteered to the British naval attaché
on 13 November: “all advisers and all specialists ceased duties with the Eg yptian Navy
on seventeenth July and have subsequently gone home,” except for “a few solely con-
cerned with liaison duties ... Ivliev was insistent that the Soviet government would
not (not) allow advisers to return ... and did not expect an invitation.”
But the British attaché’s report listed several major aspects of continuing Soviet
naval presence: “Soviet warships still use Alexandria for self-maintenance,” supported
by “a resident depot ship ... two Soviet submarines were in Alexandria on
12 November ... the numbers of Soviet engineers and technicians in the ship repair