Storm-333: KGB and Spetsnaz seize Kabul, Soviet-Afghan War 1979

by Mark Galeotti, Mark Stacey (Illustrator), Johnny Shumate (Illustrator)

Overview

Storm-333 was the opening move in the Soviet-Afghan War, a special-forces mission to seize Kabul and assassinate Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin. At once a textbook success for the Spetsnaz and KGB and the start of a terrible strategic blunder for the USSR, this is the most authoritative history of the operation available in English.

Storm-333, the operation to seize Kabul and assassinate Afghan leader Hafizullah Amin, was at once a textbook success and the start of a terrible blunder. It heralded the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, an operation intended to be a short, largely symbolic show of force, yet which quickly devolved into a gritty ten-year counter-insurgency which Moscow was never able to win. Nonetheless, Storm-333 was a striking success, and despite initial concerns from some quarters that it would be impossible, it saw a relative handful of Soviet special forces drawn from the KGB and the military seize the heavily defended presidential palace, neutralize the city's communications and defenses, and open Kabul to occupation. The lessons learned then are still valid today, and have been incorporated into modern Russian military art, visible most recently in the seizure of Crimea in 2014.

Written by a recognized expert on the Soviet security forces, drawing extensively on Russian sources, and fully illustrated with commissioned artwork, this is the most detailed and compelling study of this fascinating operation available in English.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781472841872
Publisher:	Bloomsbury USA
Publication date:	03/23/2021
Series:	Raid , #54
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.60(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

Mark Galeotti is a scholar of Russian security affairs with a career spanning academia, government service and business, a prolific author and frequent media commentator. He heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy and is an Honorary Professor at University College London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies as well as holding fellowships with RUSI, the Council on Geostrategy and the Institute of International Relations Prague. He has been Head of History at Keele University, Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and a Visiting Professor at Rutgers-Newark, Charles University (Prague) and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. He is the author of over 25 books including Putin's Wars (Osprey Publishing, 2022) and Forged in War (Osprey Publishing, 2024).

Mark Stacey was born in Manchester, UK, in 1964 and has been a freelance illustrator since 1987. He has a lifelong interest in all periods of history, particularly military history, and has specialized in this area throughout his career. He now lives and works in Cornwall.

Johnny Shumate works as a freelance illustrator living in Nashville, Tennessee. He began his career in 1987 after graduating from Austin Peay State University. Most of his work is rendered in Adobe Photoshop using a Cintiq monitor. His greatest influences are Angus McBride, Don Troiani, and Édouard Detaille.

Table of Contents

Introduction 4

Origins 6

Initial Strategy 14

Baikal-79 15

The KGB's initial plan 19

Enter Kolesnik 22

The Plan 25

From Oak to hill 26

The assault force 29

The Raid 38

Preparing chaos 38

A poisonous prelude 40

The Muslim Battalion moves out 42

The frontal assault 43

Taking the side route 48

Bottling up the loyalists south of the palace 50

Phase four 52

Taking out the AAA 54

Inside the palace 57

Mopping up 60

Analysis 63

Taking Kabul 64

The invasion 66

Politics and revenge 67

A textbook start to a misconceived war 70

After the storm 72

Conclusion 76

Further Reading 79

Index 80