IN THE THICK OF THE YOM KIPPUR WARbecome infected with the optimism of the Eg yptians ... they may smell victory and
the credit that comes with it.” This supposed euphoria was held to explain “apparent
Soviet violations of the Greek and maybe Turkish air control zones,” which Moscow
had avoided at considerable cost in 1967.
The next day (11 October), Sonnenfeldt told Kissinger: “that there was Soviet fore-
knowledge of the imminence of military action seems beyond dispute.”^21 By
13 October, he was more specific: the Soviets had “foreknowledge at least by October
3, but probably in late September.”^22 This was apparently based on a fresh report from
the US interests office in Cairo that the local “TASS agency rep ... told us that Soviets
first learned of Eg yptians’ plans for attack across canal at end of September.”^23 US assess-
ments were thus conditioned by leaks from the Soviets themselves. By then, the Soviet
resupply effort’s early start had discredited any claim that Moscow was notified just
several hours before the dependents’ evacuation began. Moving the line back by a few
days was now the best option to obscure Soviet collusion that went back at least a few
more months. A “reliable” informant of Israeli intelligence reported “on the eve of the
war” that the Eg yptians could hardly believe their vaunted adversaries had not seen
through “their deception and camouflage.”^24 The same could be said of the Americans.
The preplanning of the resupply effort’s sea component is even clearer-cut than
that of the airlift. Post-Soviet Russian sources put the departure of the first cargo
ships from the Black Sea ports of Ilyichevsk and Oktyabrsky also as early as (Sunday)
7 October—barely twenty-four hours after the first shots were fired.^25 Each of these
ships was by then laden with up to ninety-two armored vehicles. It stretches the
imagination to suppose that such a mass of armor was marshaled from scratch, moved
and loaded from one day to the next. An Israeli intelligence report on the evening of
8 October already mentioned a Soviet ship carrying aircraft (“at least five on deck”)
and bridging equipment passing through the Dardanelles.^26 The contrast with previ-
ous Western perceptions and official Soviet/Russian statements, which put the first
ships’ departure on 9 October, is thus highly significant.^27
In Syria, according to the historian Aleksey Vasiliev who was serving there as an
interpreter, the ships were met by “Soviet military personnel [who] unloaded the tanks
in port, transferred them to the front, operated the radar systems, [and] repaired tanks
and other technical equipment.”^28 Once the Politburo approval required for transfers
of such magnitude is factored in, dating the first shipments to the 7th puts the resupply
commitment even earlier—indeed, before the outbreak of war.
It is remotely possible, though highly unlikely, that this complex operation was
authorized only when “the matter was discussed at the ‘highest level’ in the Kremlin”
in the afternoon of 4 October (as Israelyan attributes to Gromyko)—that is, the
Politburo decision was taken within a few hours and carried out within two days.
This too would belie Soviet dissociation from the offensive. But it seems a safe
assumption that the transports were standing by well in advance, ready to go as soon
as this easily detectable measure could be presented as response to a fait accompli. All