THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973B. Prepositioning of the Soviet resupply
The wealth of detail in Kutsenko’s “fiction” is, then, of varying factual credibility—
but he undoubtedly was there, along with dozens if not hundreds of colleagues flown
in on 4 October. This is of momentous significance as it clarifies more oblique allu-
sions to the sensitive issue in previous accounts. Ambassador Vinogradov’s deputy
Akopov, for instance, mentioned that together with “military officers who flew from
Moscow we organized the airlift” of military materiel that began soon after the out-
break of war, as “the Eg yptians could not cope.”^15
The Soviet resupply effort was quite correctly perceived at the time as a “smoking
gun” in respect of Soviet collusion. A panel of experts led by the former US ambas-
sador in Moscow, Foy Kohler, pointed out that Assad disclosed within days of the
war’s end that he and Sadat had planned it to last ninety days:
Could the Arab leaders have risked planning on a 90-day campaign if they had not had
prior Soviet assurance of receiving additional munitions ... or conversely, if the Soviet
Union had limited the amount ... in order to maintain control over ... its clients, why did
this control prove ineffectual?^16This question would be as cogent if the war were planned for thirty days or less,
and it has remained cogent despite the prevailing trend in Western historiography to
portray the Yom Kippur War as one that “the Soviet Union did not want.”^17
The question has been underlined by new evidence that clarified the timing of the
resupply operation. The starting date of the airlift component was “the subject of
some controversy,” with the earliest date given as 7 October.^18 This was in a report by
Quandt three years after the war; in real time, in an 8 October memo to Kissinger,
Quandt counseled against compliance with Israeli resupply requests for “larger items,”
because of “the signal it would send to the Soviets and Arabs ... There are some
grounds for thinking the Soviets may be more restrained this time than in 1967”—
indicating that the United States was not yet aware that major Soviet shipments had
begun.^19 The same evening—that is, past midnight in the Middle East, when the
IDF’s situation on the canal front looked bleakest—Kissinger still saw “no chance of
its going like 1967 with the Soviets ... They’re making no threatening noises, no mili-
tary moves. ... If we wind up with the Arabs and the Soviets stay with us, we’ll be
doing very well.” His only anxiety was “if we brief the Hill, some jackass will run out
and say something pro-Israel. Then we’ve had it.”^20
Two days later (10 October), when the Soviet airlift was no longer in doubt, in
Washington its motivation was open to conflicting interpretations—whether the
Soviets were responding to heavy Arab losses in the first days of fighting, or as
Sonnenfeldt suggested, they “were somewhat surprised by the extent of Arab suc-
cesses.” He noted that “the air supply operation got going when the odds for a status-
quo-plus end to the war for the Arabs were rising.” The Soviets, then, might “have