FRAMING THE CROSS-CANAL GOALthe Russians,” via intermediaries. “The Russians asked for various particulars, we gave
them these particulars, and we never heard from them again.”^21 The newly disclosed
false signals thus strongly buttress the still-inconclusive evidence of some Soviet role
in the loss of the submarine with all its sixty-nine hands.
D. Grechko inaugurates operations against the US Sixth Fleet ...
On 30 March 1968, Soviet Defense Minister Grechko arrived in Eg ypt with no
prior announcement. When he left Moscow ten days earlier, he was said to be
headed only for Baghdad and Damascus. Even more unusually, the arrival of
Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko in Cairo on the same plane was never disclosed
at all. It came to light only in the veterans’ memoirs: Malashenko described sitting
opposite Gromyko at a banquet that Nasser held for the two Soviet ministers. He
also listed Vinogradov among the guests; the ambassador was officially in Moscow
for a month of consultations.^22
Several Eskadra ships including two cruisers joined the eight already berthed at
Alexandria for a special review in Grechko’s honor.^23 His arrival, then, was not merely
a last-minute whim to visit his daughter Tatiana, who was married to A.I. Kirichenko,
a first secretary at the embassy in Cairo.^24 The marshal, however, cancelled the “enter-
tainment” at Alexandria in favor of a “business” tour of the front-line naval units at
Port Said. The Soviet servicemen there were still at such close quarters with the
Israelis that he warned them not to be taken prisoner.^25 But Malashenko, with an
army officer’s typical contempt for his sea and air counterparts, wrote that the
Eg yptian naval commander and his Soviet adviser Sutyagin “were unable to give a
clear description of the navy’s mission in supporting defense.”
Western reports put the focus of Grechko’s visit on the Soviet pilot-instructors, the
“spearhead of the Soviet aid mission,” who were now “flying alongside” the Eg yptians
but “with great caution not to get involved, after one or more of their pilots were shot
down in Yemen.” The Soviet–Eg yptian bombing campaign in this much less obtru-
sive Middle Eastern corner of the Cold War had provided a precedent for Soviet
regulars’ presence on the ground there too: the Foxbat missions over Israel in May
1967 originated in a Soviet-built and Soviet-maintained airbase in Yemen.^26 The
number of Soviet pilots in Eg ypt was now given at “several dozen,” which “would not
have much consequence in case of a clash with the IAF”—a prognosis that would
soon be disproved.^27 Malashenko confirms that one of the Eg yptian demands that
Grechko accepted called for 100 more aircraft, in recognition that air superiority
would be essential for any offensive. “Fawzy said that for an effective counterstrike at
the IAF, the UAR needs up to 300 volunteer aces from Socialist countries.
Lashchenko replied that he doubted the Socialist countries would comply.” Grechko
too deemed that the dispatch of such “volunteer pilots was unreasonable.” But
Malashenko noted that a new contingent of Soviet advisers, who arrived that summer