Eagle Guardian STORY ONLY thread[{locked}]

Thirty-Five

The remainder of NATO – with the exceptions of Greece, Turkey & Italy - mobilised on August 1st when the actions committed by Russia were fully exposed for the world to see. It hadn’t taken much for Western intelligence services to figure out that the latest series of disasters were deliberate actions that had been carried out on Moscow’s behalf.

The scenes that took place in the countryside of northern Germany in those following days were ones of chaos. Thirty-seven people had died in the tragic incident, a direct result of actions undertaken by the GRU at the behest of the Kremlin. Amateur and professional footage of ambulances carrying away the wounded and of investigators scouring the remains of the wreckage were shown across Western television news channels, with this incident in Germany gaining far more attention than the equally tragic destruction of the Norwegian oil rig in the North Sea. . The whole thing had been meant to look like an accident, a misfortunate which would distract Germany away from the ongoing international crisis, but this was not to be. There was no evidence of a signal failure anywhere along the routes taken by either train, nor was there any evidence of human error amongst the train drivers which would have caused the incident. The specifics of how such an incident could have been caused were debatable, but almost immediately after the incident, Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service – similar to the FBI – the BND, began investigating the train crash as a possible terrorist incident. They were soon able to match the faces of several individuals who had been caught by surveillance cameras near the site of the crash to footage taken at Stuttgart International Airport of group of military-aged men entering Germany via a commercial flight from Kiev. Those individuals had been questioned upon their arrival in Germany at customs & immigration, and they stated that they were members of a Ukrainian rock-band arriving to tour Western Europe; their unlikely cover story had worked and they had been granted access to Germany.

Members of Germany’s GSG-9 police special operations unit raided a suspected safe-house near Munich where the perpetrators of the assault were believed to have gone to ground. A number of personnel from the BND were also present as the raid took place, but the heavily-armed GSG-9 men went in first, expecting the Russians to put up a fight. As expected, the trio of men inside the house fired back with submachine guns at the assault team, leading to two deaths amongst the German police assaulters. All three of the suspected Russian commandos were killed in the assault, leaving Allied intelligence services with no live prisoners to interrogate. Nonetheless, numerous Russian-made firearms and explosive devices were discovered when the location was searched along with large sums of cash and several false passports that the BND believed to have been issued by Russian intelligence. Russia had been behind the train incident and the lives lost were on the hands of the GRU; this was something that the German security establishment was utterly convinced of and so they felt confident enough to present their evidence to the rest of NATO through Brussels.

A number of NATO foreign ministers and secretaries, including US Secretary of State Clinton, were in Brussels, flitting about between NATO’s civilian headquarters and its military counterpart, SHAPE. Their presence was part of a last-ditch effort to bring the world back from the brink of war. Numerous meetings had taken place between representatives from almost all NATO countries along with military and intelligence personnel. The US, Britain, France, Poland and the Baltic States were trying to bring the Germans and the smaller European states to understand that war was now highly likely, in order to get them to mobilise and send their forces eastwards as the larger NATO allies had already started doing.

German intelligence officers briefed the remaining members of the alliance on what they knew about the train crash. Back in Berlin, military chiefs of staff were advising Chancellor Merkel and her cabinet on the military steps that could be taken in response; Germany had started a full-scale mobilisation shortly after the train crash, following in the footsteps of Poland, France and the United Kingdom. Soon, German forces would join their allies in large numbers in Poland to reinforce them further, with the first German Army unit to arrive being the 1st Airmobile Brigade, which was rapidly placed under the command of the US Army’s V Corps, stationed along the Polish border with Belarus. Norway, a country which bordered Russia and subsequently had been in the process of mobilising for several days now, also sent a delegation of military and intelligence officers to Brussels to brief NATO’s political representatives on what they had uncovered while investigating the explosion on their North Sea oil rig. Their evidence was somewhat less damning that what the Germans had shown, but it was still highly suspicious, with a patrol aircraft noting the presence of a Russian submarine in the area of the oil rig less than an hour before the devastating explosion, a submarine which could have carried frogmen carrying explosives. The explosives which had caused the eruption in the first place couldn’t be traced back to the GRU, but the fact that bomb residue had been found at all was damning enough, proving that whatever had happened out there had been a deliberate action and not a horribly coincidental accident. As the nation was already mobilising for war, there was little more that could be done by Oslo except for an increase in security patrols around oil rigs as well as around potential strategic targets around Norway. In an controversial measure, the Norwegian security forces also began detaining suspected Russian infiltrators and collaborators, operating under the authority of Cold War-era emergency protocols meant to defend the country from behind-the-lines attacks.

The reluctant governments of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, and many others, followed suit.

There was no more will to resist what was now seen as inevitable; war was coming and it was better to be prepared. This sentiment was echoed in the United Kingdom when the British government had mobilised its Armed Forces several days prior. Already, roads and railways across Central Europe were flooded with military traffic; virtually all German and Polish airports became military supply hubs with thousands of civilian flights being cancelled. As far as the eye could see, military vehicles trundled down every highway heading eastwards, including massive trucks built to carry tanks and armoured vehicles to the battlefield. Adding to the chaos was the suspension of most American civilian flights as the Civil Reserve Air Fleet was called up. Now, tens of thousands of Allied troops from the more reluctant European nations were also en route to Eastern Europe to join General Petraeus’ Combined Joint Task Force – East, which by now was effectively an Army-level formation, as NATO had planned during previous exercises where this scenario had been practiced. Those watching felt that the world was falling apart around them; this was all supposed to have ended when the wall came down. There wasn’t meant to be the threat of nuclear war dangling over their heads, not now in the Twenty-First Century.





Thirty–Six

Back in 2004, the Blair-led Labour government had brought in the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA). This replaced much of the emergency powers and civil defence acts previously in-place from the Cold War. It had been controversial in its drafting with comments made that should it be brought into force, Britain overnight would become a totalitarian state; its defenders pointed to the guarantees within, such as ensuring that the powers couldn’t overturn the Human Rights Act, which would see to it that that could never happen. The CCA was said to be needed to prepare Britain for 21st Century threats of terrorism and such like. Passed by Parliament, the Act was on the statue book. To come into force, for a sitting government to make use of the many powers within, the CCA needed either Royal Assent from the Monarch via an order-in-council or, in dire emergency, a Minister of the Crown could do that: the former was preferred but the latter was possible.

In the late afternoon of Friday 30th July, the Act came into force. Britain truly prepared for war with this.


All through that day, starting in the early hours and continuing without break, there had been high-level meetings ongoing within the heart of London. These took place in Downing Street and among the ministerial buildings along & near Whitehall as well as across at Buckingham Palace too. News coming in from Germany and Norway of the Russian state terror attacks, then what was being discussed over in Brussels where both NATO and EU foreign ministers and officials were, were a focus of these London meetings though there was also something else going on. The top tier of the British government met in the Cabinet Office building – in the COBRA room – following two violent events which had taken place on British soil the night beforehand. First there had been two deaths at Heathrow Airport where a pair of civilian security guards had been murdered – one had his throat slit; the other shot with a poison-laced bullet (that poison an unknown and lethal substance) – and then there had been a shooting incident out in Gloucestershire near the GCHQ complex where British soldiers had opened fired on a man and killed him. A terror attack on Britain’s biggest airport had been averted by the second of those two guards who raised the alert on time but it had only been luck which had seen that. The other event had been an intelligence-led operation conducted by MI-5 where they were supported by the SAS yet problems had cropped up and the man they were following had gotten free of their surveillance and rushed towards the vital facility which was GCHQ Cheltenham with a vehicle which (correctly) was suspected of containing a bomb. These were Russian attacks. The evidence was there for this, especially with the second attempted attack and the defusing of that bomb. That terrorist in question – believed to be a GRU agent – had arrived in Britain after coming in on a Serbian passport: he’d flown from Belgrade to Amsterdam then on to Dublin before finally ending up at the small Bristol Airport. He’d gotten through Dutch, Irish and then British airport security but gone to a suspected Russian safehouse – one which was hours away from being raided anyway – in Bath to pick up that vehicle. After his shooting a couple of miles short of his target, there’d been that raid on the residential property where others were meant to be yet they had unexplainably disappeared. MI-5 had waited too long and the SAS had no one to nab for them. This whole thing was a mess. The Irish authorities had another man, someone who’d flown to Dublin alongside the supposed Serbian, in their custody because they – not the Dutch who’d let him pass – hadn’t suspected his passport was fake. This man was due to fly to Liverpool but was now being held by the Irish. Flight records showed the two men as travelling together before splitting up and the Irish were being cooperative in holding the man (they had legitimate reason to) but there was no indication of what this man had been planning to do after reaching Britain’s shores coming in through Ireland. As had been the case with the watch on the house in Bristol, the failed watch it must be said for the men inside got away, there were other operations ongoing up and down the country where the authorities had surveillance upon people and properties. Police support for MI-5 was there in most cases; the presence of SAS troopers (in plain clothes but armed to the teeth) was supposed to be for the most-dangerous of threats. Following the Bristol-Cheltenham incident, and the news from Dublin, other raids were authorised. Dawn saw most of these commence where doors were broken down and people arrested: those detainees had passports denoting them as citizens from several countries though all were suspected to be Russians. Five arrests were made while two others sought were shot and killed in exchanges of fire; COBRA had issued the authorisation after the other incidents. The ministers and officials in London where COBRA was meeting were given fragmentary news, issued to them as it came in, and there wasn’t much good in that. At two of the incidents, each where the suspects were killed, there was evidence there that these were certainly Russians due to weapons and equipment seized. With the others in custody, it quickly started to look like the intelligence was faulty and these people were innocent. They were taken away for questioning but nothing looked promising with that. Questions were asked as to how could these apparent multiple mistakes have been made? Had someone set these people up to be watched – using many resources – for the motive of hiding what they were up to elsewhere? The now three deaths of these actual Russians wasn’t something which they were happy to hear at COBRA. Dead men can tell no tales. There had already been the issue in recent days with those men who had been killed by the Germans in Munich rather than captured alive for questioning. Unfortunate diplomatic comments had already been made in recent days coming from Italy’s prime minister about this, which had led to a Berlin-Rome diplomatic spat, and it was something raised among critics here in Britain too. Now a trio of Russians had been killed in Britain. It would be said by some that that was mightily suspicious, wasn’t it? Such people had gone out shooting though and the military teams had had no choice but… there were those who would make trouble from this.

These incidents led to more meetings and decisions being taken. Russian activities like this on British soil were clearly a prelude to attacks such had been seen in Germany and Norway. The country had been lucky so far: that luck wasn’t going to hold. Prime Minister Cameron met with his full Cabinet and then also the Leader of the Opposition. He spoke on the phone to allies abroad from Obama to Sarkozy to Merkel. He attended a military briefing giving the latest news on military preparations observed with Russia’s conventional forces. The decision was made by the afternoon. There were objections, many of them worthy points raised though, unfortunately, a few petty ones too, but there was no other option. War couldn’t be averted with Russia hell-bent on conflict. Thus, the country now needed to be more ready than it already was to face that. He went to see the Queen and then came back to Downing Street again. It was a quarter after three when the Civil Contingencies Act came into force though no announcement was made yet. Time was needed to get things moving: many things had to be done first by the government acting in secret to get ahead of the curve. It was five o’clock before that announcement occurred. Cameron spoke live to the nation from outside Downing Street and told the country that security measures which were going to effect everyday life were now in effect. He explained things as best as he could, striking an even tone of strength but regret, and urged people not to panic. What was being done was to protect the country and the people. Both Clegg and Harman made separate speeches within the hour afterwards (the latter making a big deal out of Parliament being recalled to meet the coming Monday), the Mayor of London made an improvised bombastic speech and Buckingham Palace put out a statement that the Queen would be speaking to the country tomorrow in another live broadcast.


Britain didn’t turn into a totalitarian state.

There were all those powers which the government could use though chose not to do so, not at this time anyway. The CCA was drafted to be flexible in its use. Cameron wasn’t that sort of politician either… plus one day he did hope to be re-elected! Fudges were made, some things weren’t done which with later hindsight they should have been. A lot of the half-measures which were put into place were due to the desire not to utterly collapse the economy. That was going to take a big hit regardless of what was done but national economic suicide wasn’t wanted. There were some civil liberties concerns which saw a few things scaled back too. This was where much of the later regret would come.

The CCA covered many transition to war factors and these were those which were quickly going to have a major impact on the lives of many ordinary people. Airlines, ferry companies and the Channel Tunnel came under state control with the Department of Transport and the MOD but also other government departments empowered to make use of them for the public good. A lot of people were about to have their holidays cancelled – it was summer and the school holidays had just started! – and others were going to end up temporarily stuck. Transportation issues elsewhere across the country were going to be affected too with airports, ports and railways impacted. Internal passenger rail services weren’t cancelled and the roads weren’t shut but the knock-on effects were fast going to be immense: far beyond expectations. There would be petrol rationing as well: the chaos there was also something to be fast occurring as people didn’t listen to the ‘don’t panic’ message. Telecommunications out of the country were also going to be restricted and so too international mail services. Schools and universities were already closed for the holidays so the issues there weren’t what they would have been at other times of the year though there would be no gathering of spectators at public events for sports, music or other events. Those would be exposed targets for hostile action. The Department of Health began instructing hospitals that they were to cancel non-urgent appointments and prepare for casualties. Moving significant sums of money out of the country or making big withdrawals from banks were to be stopped from occurring.

The government put this information out over the airwaves that night with newspapers instructed to print more the coming day. Broadcasters weren’t going to come under direct censorship though the Department of Culture, Media & Sport reserved the powers to see this done. The non-restrictions here where there were CCA powers were typical of the measured approach which Cameron wanted to see done and what he had domestic political support for. There was no dusk-to-dawn curfew nationwide. Civilian conscription wasn’t taking place. Blackouts weren’t about to happen and businesses weren’t about to be nationalised en masse. What was being done wasn’t all that could have been done here.


However, out of the public eye there were things being done where CCA powers were used for Cold War era recognised forms that this modern legislation replaced. More arrests were made nationwide and these weren’t made public. Foreign nationals – especially Russians and those from Russian-friendly nations (the former USSR countries) – were detained in large numbers. The most dangerous ones were to be kept in detention long term though the idea was that most would be released from custody on ‘control orders’. There was confidence at the top in Whitehall that this would work yet others in the know decried this as a sop to soft politicians which was bound to go wrong. There would be those who were correct on this issue and those who were wrong: time would tell on that. Other arrests targeted domestic extremists on the left and the right. Of note, a businessman named Arron Banks and his Russian-born wife, the latter whose naturalisation had a connection to the MP Mike Hancock, were both detained. These detentions would look very political with hindsight and came alongside others which were seen as being a case of politics rather than national security: the government would be later accused of misusing CCA powers.

Security measures nationwide meant that the military was called upon to support the police. There were SAS soldiers and other special forces personnel who would now act openly. So many of Britain’s soldiers were being sent overseas yet those who remained behind – a lot of reservists among them who were recalled to uniform – were to stay to help with national security. There wouldn’t be soldiers patrolling ordinary streets as if this was now a police state yet important infrastructure would have a military presence. The middle of the country’s capital city would have that too with both regular men from the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry as well as TA soldiers (the London Regiment) present. They were meant to be there only to support the police in public order duties if things got very far out of hand. Their main job was to free up officers from guarding tasks and also provide a stronger anti-terror force than the police could. Royalty, politicians and government buildings were going to be guarded by soldiers now. Given increased powers, plus with their numbers bolstered, the Met. Police faced a challenge the next morning where they stopped the gathering of crowds for a pre-planned but now-cancelled peace march. The Stop the War Coalition, supported by the Socialist Workers Party and other groups, had previously applied for and been granted permission to hold a march for Saturday 31st. This wasn’t going to be allowed to happen under CCA measures and official cancellation had already been announced. Still some people tried to come. They wanted to protest against military deployments and any possible war. These weren’t people supporting Russia: they just didn’t want a war. The police did well yet they did fail to get a-hold of many troublemakers in the end. Those people would be back. The impact of the CCA was going to drive a lot of people to do many crazy things in the coming weeks and months: chief among them fighting the authorities.

British military dependants abroad were finally brought home from mainland Europe and the Foreign Office also announced that British civilians overseas would be aided in returning home. There was going to be an almighty mess with the latter with transport problems and bureaucratic cock-ups aplenty taking place there; other Britons chose to stay overseas too even when their host countries wanted them to go. While this was going on, people coming to the UK, others remained flying out. Military personnel were on the move as Britain’s military commitment to support its NATO allies continued. The British Army had its 3rd Mechanised Division was being formed ready to deploy to Poland. This would take some time to achieve yet when it did move, during the coming week, it would also be joined by a Canadian brigade attachment too. Instead of those Canadians, there could have been a reinforcement of the unit by significant numbers of TA troops forming battalions and thus a brigade but the MOD chose not to go down that route. Men and women from Britain’s Territorial Army were instead undergoing refresher training nationwide after being mobilised following the shooting down of that Ryanair passenger jet. The better-trained and already organised Canadians would go with the 3rd Division in their place. At three military airbases in southern and eastern parts of England where the Americans had a significant foot-print, the US Army sent some soldiers to aid them. RAF Fairford, RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall had other soldiers flying through them but these men came to deploy to protect each. Three batteries of the four attached to the battalion which was the 3rd of the 2nd Air Defence Artillery Regiment (the other battery being sent to a base in the Netherlands) arrived complete with equipment. That equipment was their Patriot PAC-3 missiles. There were eighteen mobile launchers for these missiles now spread across the countryside – away from the actual bases themselves – where they would provide defence against air and missile attack from hidden dispersed positions. The Patriot had a mixed combat record though the US Army had sent them here to aid the US Air Force. There had been a request made from Fox where the defence secretary had personally asked his counterpart in Washington if another battery could be spared to provide coverage for London; Gates had turned him down on this matter. There wasn’t the spare capacity to go around. The MOD was providing much support in terms of securing ease of basing for this dispersed set up (among woodland and on hill tops, often on private property, the launchers plus gear to allow them to function was located) but the Americans just couldn’t help there with providing coverage over London. As to the 3-2 ADA and its Patriots guarding military sites, they were going to see combat use next month.

Thirty-Nine

There were three NATO countries that were specifically and pointedly not mobilising for war in the same capacity as the rest of the Alliance. While NATO forces across the continent had gone on alert and been sent eastwards against the looming threat posed by Russia, the governments of Italy, Greece, and Turkey remained staunchly neutral in the crisis, determined not to get involved in the oncoming conflict. There were a variety of reasons for this across all three nations’, with the principle one being domestic opposition to the idea of a major war in Europe. There had been disagreements with Turkey that were far more blatant, with that country withdrawing its military personnel from NATO assignments following the failed coup d’état against President Gul.

Greece was wracked by financial crisis, and the government of Prime Minister George Papandreou couldn’t face the possibility of being forced to fight a war against Russia, a war in which his own country would be on the frontlines and would almost certainly fall victim to attack from the air or even to an amphibious assault along the coast, opening up the Bosporus for Russian warships to traverse through. Greece was pointedly not deploying its own relatively large military alongside its NATO allies. The threat of attacks directly against Hellenic soil was simply too much for the government to allow, and combined with Greece’s economically ruinous state, Papandreou’s government wasn’t willing to take the country to war. Of course, it didn’t help that Germany had refused to grant Greece an emergency loan earlier in 2010; many would see Greece’s refusal to stand alongside her allies as an act of revenge for the failure of the rest of Europe to come to Greece’s aid financially. Personnel from Russia’s SVR quietly talked with Greek officials throughout those final days of peace, ensuring that Papandreou was aware that a neutral Greece would not face any military action from Russia; neutrality was all that was required to avoid the bombing of Greek cities by Russian warplanes.

Italy faced a rather different form of bullying from Russia’s intelligence services.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the head of government of Italy, had always held a fairly warm relationship with President Vladimir Putin. Berlusconi was also scandal-ridden politician with a long and sordid history. There were allegations of corruption and bribery against him when it came to several business projects, and on numerous occasions the Italian Prime Minister had been accused of holding wild sex parties involving prostitutes and illegal narcotics. However, there was little to no evidence of these events that could ever lead to criminal prosecution for Berlusconi himself. However, the SVR new of one particular dirty little secret which would change that fact. Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service had been searching for such damning Kompromat against western politicians in general since the end of the Georgia War of 2008, and in the case of Berlusconi they had been more successful than had ever been anticipated.

The SVR had uncovered that the Italian Prime Minister had been involved in the sexual abuse of a child. A teenage Moroccan girl who worked as a prostitute in Italy had been found to have attended a ‘party’ at Berlusconi’s villa, where a bizarre sex ritual had been performed. Sex offenders in general are viewed in a particularly negative light in the prison system and for a man of Berlusconi’s stature, the public humiliation of this all coming to light and the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence was too horrifying a thought to contemplate.

Moscow’s ambassador to Italy, after being briefed by personnel from the SVR, paid a visit to the Italian Prime Minister. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, the two men were left alone and the ambassador got to work. He was himself truly a diplomat and not a spy, but in his tenure as a civil servant he had worked with people from the SVR & GRU and new how to behave when conducting operations such as these. The ambassador told Berlusconi that it was in Italy’s best interest to remain neutral. Berlusconi was shown plans for missile attacks against Milan and Rome, and informed that should any ‘hypothetical’ conflict escalate into nuclear war, Italy would definitely be a target for nuclear annihilation if it joined in the fighting. The ambassador then coyly told Berlusconi what the SVR new about his numerous encounters with the aforementioned Moroccan girl. Moscow’s representative was wonderfully skilful in his hinting towards Berlusconi at his knowledge of the scandal and about the ‘friends’ Moscow could make in the Italian media or the police were this information to fall into the hands of someone outside Berlusconi’s inner circle of entrusted people.

The release of information such as that would ruin Berlusconi’s life. He would face impeachment, imprisonment and public humiliation that would last for the remainder of his life. Again, the ambassador told Berlusconi that it was in Italy’s best interests to remain neutral. No Italian Military forces were mobilised beyond preparatory steps in those last days of peace in Europe. Berlusconi wasn’t going to take Italy to war with Russia, but he did vow that Italy would defend its own airspace and waters from attack. NATO forces weren’t asked to leave Italy and there was confusion at SHAPE as to what this would mean when war did break out and how that would be dealt with.

Italian military officers and spooks committed treason on August 4th.

Their actions were thoroughly illegal but also thoroughly justified. When it had been announced the previous day that the Italian Armed Forces wouldn’t be deploying with their NATO allies, there had been fury amongst senior military personnel. They didn’t want a war, of course, but Italy was obligated by treaty to fight one if and when Russia attacked the Baltic States, and for this commitment to be ignored by Berlusconi was an outrage to them. There would be no military coup like what had taken place in Russia, and no tanks would take to the streets to overthrow the government, but officers in the Italian Armed Forces acted against the law nonetheless in resisting Berlusconi’s orders.

Italy’s military and civilian intelligence organisations began investigating possible links between Berlusconi and the Kremlin; in addition to this, senior military officers assigned to the NATO headquarters began informing their American and British counterparts that it was suspected by Italian intelligence that Berlusconi was colluding with Moscow, be that willingly or through some form of coercion. Contacts were sought in Parliament between senior soldiers and parliamentarians who respected Italy’s NATO obligations as evidence to bring down Berlusconi was sought. It was all being done very discretely with nobody having any desire to be caught and face prosecution themselves, but the Central Intelligence Agency offered all the help it could give in bringing Italy back to the NATO alliance and having that country’s armed forces fight against Russia as war loomed.

Turkey was the third and final NATO country to refuse its obligations. This was because President Gul believed that the CIA had played a part in orchestrating the failed coup attempt that had occured days ago. Roundups of military officers whose involvement was suspected were still ongoing, and from what the SVR was telling their Turkish counterparts it seemed as though the United States had sought to overthrow President Gul and Prime Minister Erdogan to put a new, more amiable government into power and ensure that Turkey fought against Russia. President Gul had no intention of bringing his country into a war against Russia, whose intelligence services were performing a very useful role to Turkey by informing them about American operations going on there. Turkey had decided to expel NATO forces from Incirlik Airbase on its soil, marking the effective end of its membership of the alliance. As well as declaring that Turkey would not deploy forces northwards into Europe, President Gul announced that Turkey was closing the Bosporus to any military warships – NATO or otherwise - until further notice. This would prevent NATO warships from entering the Black Sea and engaging Russian forces there, which could prove to be disastrous in a military campaign.

The US Sixth Fleet had been preparing to send more warships into that enclosed area of water to reinforce the NATO shipping already present, but without the ability to do that it was likely that NATO could lose its entire fleet there to Russian land-based airpower and submarine attacks.

There were fierce debates amongst the Sixth Fleet’s headquarters staff. The Sixth Fleet was undoubtedly the NATO formation most affected by the refusal of Turkey, Greece, and Italy to honour their treaty obligations. Vice Admiral Harry Harris, Sixth Fleet commander, was deeply troubled by what was going on. Without access to the Black Sea he couldn’t reinforce his isolated task force there, and with the Italians staying neutral he was missing a good chunk of the land-based air cover as well as a good number of anti-submarine warfare vessels that would otherwise be supporting him. With no other option, Harris ordered the Stennis carrier strike group to head eastwards towards the Bosporus and take up position there, not entering the Strait.

If and when war came, Harris could order his surface forces to go through the Bosporus, if necessary fighting their way through Turkish forces to get there; that situation was not considered likely, but the prospect of Turkish forces resisting NATO entry into the Black Sea was something that Sixth Fleet had to at least contemplate. For now, Sixth Fleet moved to its pre-war positions in the Eastern Mediterranean, ready to strike when the time came.

And it was coming.




Forty

According to Russian state media, the Baltic States were in a situation of chaos. Towns and cities were burning, there was gunfire everywhere and a full-scale genocide was going on where ‘native Russians’ were being slaughtered by the governments of those countries, aided by NATO in this too. The stories coming out of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were horrible to hear for any Russian at home or aboard. All of those poor people were helpless there in the face of these massacres of the innocents! Pleas were heard from purported victims of what was happened where they begged the Rodina to come and save them. Naturally, this was all a lie. For such events as these to be taking place in the Baltic States was a wholly preposterous idea. When footage of what Russian television was showing was seen in the West, on the face of it this was something to laugh at. That wasn’t what was happening and it certainly wasn’t being done with NATO troops! Yet, it was no laughing matter. This was what was being broadcast to the Russian people. While not dumb and foolish enough to believe everything that their government would tell them, it was all that those in Russia saw. They heard no criticism of this story. The evidence presented to them of these so-called states of chaos might not have been overwhelming yet nothing came to counter that narrative. Only one story was told and many believed what they were told on that. Those who didn’t, and there were many of them too, had nothing to use in arguments with their enraged countrymen to disprove these assertions which were all over the media. Enough anger rose within Russia to make the whole effort worth it. The people were told that others were demanding that action be taken and were asked themselves whether they wanted action taken too. From across Russia, the answer that was portrayed here to everyone else was that all Russians wanted to see this stopped and they should join in too. Playing with public emotions like this where rage was whipped up was dangerous for any government as these things can easily spin out of control. In the Kremlin, the Russian leadership believed that they could control the anger and keep it directed where it needed to be.

Lies were being told in the Russian media but that didn’t mean that there wasn’t violence taking place inside Estonia and Latvia among areas where ethnic Russians lived. There had been shootings. There had been explosions. People had been killed. However, none of it was on the scale as depicted back over in Russia and what was occurring was pretty much the opposite of the story being told. It wasn’t the authorities in these two small nations attacking innocent civilians but rather groups of Kremlin-created militia, supported by professional state terrorists, who were committing these acts of violence. They targeted Estonian and Latvian government forces when acting as freedom fighters though then played the agent provocateur role by donning the necessary uniforms to give off the lie that they were acting for those. When in that secondary role, mostly carried out by the FSB men not the locals, the false flag terror attacks targeted ethnic Russians. The attackers had a lot in their favour with good intelligence, support from traitors (many of whom didn’t understand their role in what they were doing), access to weaponry and motivation. What they didn’t have though was neither the element of surprise, the numbers nor free movement. Estonia and Latvia were locked down. A huge internal security effort was underway and it suffocated the movement of the attackers as well as their ability to deliver any real significant blows to either country more than many unnecessary deaths. Security forces returned fire on attackers where they encountered them on the defence. Moreover, sweeps were conducted through identified vulnerable areas to take on their enemy before they could strike at fixed points.

What came from all of this was a great loss of life. Dozens upon dozens were killed over the course of several days. Latvia was harder hit than Estonia was – Lithuania remained unaffected – in all of this. Chaos and anarchy, as the Russian media said it was, wasn’t there yet the situation couldn’t be dismissed. The penetration into these countries of Russian proxies and even some of their own men (another live FSB prisoner was taken to add to the one that the Americans had to prove this) showed how exposed each was. Months of getting ready for this hadn’t stopped what had come. From Tallinn and Riga, requests were made by the two governments for their NATO allies to give further support than they already were to stop more attacks coming. They’d thought their borders were secure from infiltration and they were prepared to cut down attempts at violence within yet been wrong there. There was some evidence that the attackers had taken grievous losses and blown their load leaving them unable to keep this up but that couldn’t be assured. Further acts of violence, stronger than before and this time using more Russian rather than locals, could occur though. Tallinn and Riga could have been wrong in thinking they had had as much success as they had: the couldn’t take the chance here. What was asked for was for fighting men – special forces preferably – to enter the battle to add to the aerial coverage, intelligence aid and the already present troop commitment given to Estonia and Latvia. The requests were made all the way to the top of NATO. These pleas were discussed at the highest level. Out of politeness, the rest of NATO talked over the matter though had no intention of sending more men. To deploy them into the region was to send them to their doom because the Baltic States were near-surrounded by Russian and Belorussian forces. Should they move in, anyone on the ground would be trapped. NATO still hoped that last ditch efforts at diplomacy and Putin reconsidering would stop conflict occurring: putting soldiers into Estonia and Latvia wasn’t going to do any good on that note.


The ‘China tip’ came from Australia.

An officer with the Australian SIS – pretty much similar to Britain’s MI-6 rather than the American CIA – was being worked by a Chinese counterpart in Beijing though the Australian was trying to turn his contact instead. The complicated game of spies between these two men was interrupted when the Russians came to town. The Australian SIS couldn’t get access to the discussions through their contact though the Americans were informed through the Five Eyes agreement that the Russian foreign minister was in Beijing meeting with the Chinese leadership and the topic at hand was to ensure Chinese neutrality in a conflict between Russia and the West. The CIA took over trying to uncover what was going on though the initial involvement of the Australia’s intelligence service would have some interesting after-effects down the line in the form of the entry to Australia to fight alongside its traditional allies in the coming conflict. That was for later though. For now, the CIA sent its own people to do all that they could to listen in on the Chinese-Russian talks. Back home, there were discussions in Washington as to whether active interference could be made to sabotage relations between Beijing and Moscow. It was (correctly) hypothesised that Russia wouldn’t go to war without having to worry about the Chinese stabbing them in the back. If it looked like the Chinese might then maybe…

Alas, that wasn’t to be. Kozak arrived in Beijing to seal an already struck deal. Russia had left things late with regards to China but not that late. The Chinese had been approached nearly a week beforehand – straight after the Russian Security Council made the decision to go to war – with a request from the Kremlin for Chinese neutrality. It had been dressed up in diplomatic terms so as to not cause offence to the notoriously picky Chinese leadership, but that was the gist of it. Beijing had urged Moscow to consider what they were getting into: in other words, are you out of your minds!? The Russian position had been explained. China had still urged Russia to sort this out diplomatically and even make overt threats to the West if necessary but stated that they believed that war was the worst thing that could be done. The Kremlin hadn’t listened to that advice and reaffirmed the determination – even when China offered to act as an honest broker in Russia-NATO talks – for war. In the end, exasperated at the turn of events, the Chinese let the Russians know that what occurred was to be none of their concern as long as their own interests weren’t threatened. Russia said that it wouldn’t put those in danger. Chinese neutrality, no stab in the back coming from Russia’s eastern neighbour, was thus ensured. Compared to the problems Russia was having with other allies (and Kozak had promised a lot on what he couldn’t now deliver) this was seen as a great success.

The ink was barely dry on the agreement struck in Beijing when Zubkov started issuing orders for a military redeployment of Russian military forces from the eastern side of the giant country which was Russia across to the western side. There had already been the transfer of some forces in the preceding months, though in these last days of peace there came a larger movement. None were going to be in-place by the time the shooting started but there was a hurry to get them westwards as soon as possible. Too much hurry was employed and accidents occurred. A major one of these was a derailment of a freight train in western Siberia: that freight being ammunition. From barracks near the town of Aleysk and on the way to the city of Novosibirsk, going up the Turkestan-Siberia Railway to join the Trans-Siberian Railway, a mass of ammunition for a deploying motor rifle division was being moved. Like vehicles and other equipment, the ammunition was being moved ahead of the fighting men along a very busy railroad. Human error caused the accident but organisational mismanagement was responsible for the unsafe packaging and inadequate safe loading of the ammunition. One explosion led to another to another… and so on. The whole load carried on the train – bullet, shells, rockets and missiles – eventually went up. There was devastation for miles around across the harsh Siberian landscape.

The explosions late on August 4th were seen from above. American satellites above Russia with the DSP programme detected the blasts. There were only a few moments of concern from those monitoring the feed looking for missile launches because the detection systems, despite the intensity of the blasts, correctly summarised these as not being the heat of missile launches but rather explosions on the ground. Once that was out of the way, American attention remained though. The Aleysk garrison was well known about and so was the rail link from there onwards. Now a different sort of attention was now paid here. Other satellites with difference equipment were tasked to sweep over Russian military sites through Siberia and across the wider Russian Far East. Similar sights to what was being seen at Aleysk – not the train crash scene but the military base – were observed at these. Russian military forces, ground and air, were on the move. Analysis summarised that a trio of combat divisions (about 40% of what was left east of the Urals in terms of regular Russian combat formations) were on the move but alongside them, and of greater importance, was all of the combat support and service support assets underway too. There were brigades of artillery, rockets, SAMs and combat engineers and well as transport, signal and logistics units. They were all on the move. They were all heading westwards.

Forty-Three

For nearly a week now, units of the Royal Netherlands Navy had been tracking a freighter ship as it steamed across the North Sea, seemingly en route for the famed Dutch harbour of Rotterdam, a bustling international seaport. The origin of the vessel was unknown to Dutch intelligence. Other agencies such as the CIA and MI6 could offer little information about the ship, except that she had at one time been registered under the flag of Sudan some years prior.

There was no database to show where the ship had left port and where she had travelled thus far; all that was certain was that she had briefly halted in Kaliningrad several days prior. With the crisis in Eastern Europe threatening to spiral out of control, and with British forces preparing to enter the European mainland through ports such as Rotterdam, a decision was made within the cabinet of the Dutch government that the unknown vessel – known as the “Ghost Ship” – was to be intercepted and boarded. This operation was to be carried out by men from M Squadron of the Maritime Special Operations Forces.

M Squadron, unlike its sister C Squadron, specialised in the counter-terrorism role and had practiced such boarding’s dozens of times. Joining these elite Dutch commandos were four members of Britain’s Special Boat Service, the SBS.

The four SBS men joining the Dutch had been attached to the unit in preparation for joint operations overseas, but when the sergeant commanding the small detachment informed his superiors of the imminent Dutch raid on the Ghost Ship, the decision was reached in Whitehall to allow those for Royal Marines to join in the operation. Elite as they were, nobody could deny that the Dutch commandos did not have the same measure of combat experience in Iraq and Afghanistan as the SBS soldiers, and the Dutch were largely grateful for the support although somewhat resentful that their allies thought they needed the help.

This issue was fast overcome, however. There was a long-standing tradition of friendship between the Dutch Marines and their British equivalents, and under NATO war plans, the majority of the Dutch Marines would find themselves under the command of the UK’s 3 Commando Brigade, which was currently up in Norway alongside its American counterparts. The government in The Hague was also happy to have the diplomatic support gained by the interception being a joint operation.

The assault team, numbering thirty-one commandos including the British troops, moved by helicopter from the mainland to the frigate Tromp, patrolling in the North Sea at a distance. Aboard the ship, the commandos underwent a final briefing and carried out final checks on their weapons and equipment.

They wore black dry-suits to protect them from the icy waters should they end up there; their weapons were short-barrelled versions of the Heckler & Koch 416 assault rifle, with each man also carrying a Sig Saur 9mm pistol for use in a more confined environment; they also wore night-vision goggles attached to their lightweight helmets. Some of the commandos carried shotguns or breaching charges to make their way through locked doors. After spending nearly an hour afloat aboard the Tromp, the Dutch & British commandos were given the final approval to mount an assault on the Ghost Ship.

Though the primary threat was believed to be Russian Special Forces – Spetsnaz – the Dutch also believed that the ship could be nothing to do with the Eastern Europe Crisis at all, but rather a plot by terrorists. They were prepared for any eventuality. The assault team boarded a trio of Royal Netherlands Navy NH-90 helicopters. Due to the small nature of the frigate’s helipad, the helicopters had to land one after the other to pick up their troops. The helicopters made visual contact with the Ghost Ship at quarter to four in the morning, Amsterdam time. Efforts by the Tromp to hail the Ghost Ship had been met with stony silence. As the leading NH-90 approached the ship, a figure aboard the vessel fired upon the chopper with an RPG-29.

The assailant had been hasty in aiming the weapon and the ship was being tossed about by the waves; it was a harrowing moment for those aboard the aircraft, but the flaming projectile missed narrowly as the helicopter pilot banked sharply to the left. Door gunners aboard the three NH-90s returned fire with machineguns, trading rounds with the crew of the ship while the pilots manoeuvred their lumbering beasts into position to disembark the commandos. After a brief exchange of gunfire between the enemy troops and the helicopter door gunners, two of the NH-90s came to a hover at both ends of the storm-tossed vessel.

Commandos began repelling from those two helicopters, while the third chopper provided cover with its machineguns. Men aboard the ship fired on the rappelling Dutch commandos with short-barrelled AK-74s and other small-arms. Two of the Dutchmen were hit, one killed and another wounded, before they reached the ground. The remaining troops leapfrogged expertly into the ship, killing several of their opponents as they advanced. The circling NH-90 returned fire onto the bridge of the ship, killing several people within the tower.

The fire-fight lasted for some thirteen minutes, with the commandos clearing the ship room-by-room and taking heavy casualties. Six Dutchmen and one British commando were killed as the ship was cleared; Ten of their opponents were dead, and six more had been captured by the time the vessel was declared secure. The men captured aboard the ship were clearly Russian speakers.


Before a second wave of helicopters arrived to deposit a bomb-disposal experts and a scratch crew to run the Ghost Ship to safety, the commandos attempted a hasty interrogation of their prisoners, but to no avail. Apparently not understanding the Dutch, but answering questions in thickly-accented English when questioned in that language, each prisoner simply repeated that he had nothing to say.




At that moment, no coercive methods where used against the prisoners. However, before being loaded aboard one of the helicopters, those Russians were informed bluntly that, as they were not in uniform, they could not expect to be offered the protections granted by international laws governing the treatment of Prisoners of War.

While they remained in the custody of the Dutch, the intelligence services of the United States, Great Britain, and France would all want to talk to these individuals. Reports of the incident in the North Sea were sent up the chain of command first to SACEUR in Brussels and them from Admiral Stavridis up to the political leaders of almost all NATO countries as Moscow denied those men aboard the Ghost Ship were Russian commandos, claiming them to be terrorists unaffiliated with Russia.

Thus, the final hours of peace came to an end.





Forty–Four – Renegade Down

For a long time now, the position of Admiral Blair as the US’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI) had been imperilled. He’d held on to his role when many expected that he would have been asked to resign and leave the Obama Administration. There had been many disputes between him and other elements of the Intelligence Community – that alphabet soup of multiple agencies – though these couldn’t all be blamed on him: the two previous office holders, both under Bush, had faced similar troubles. The issue which was long there, which remained unresolved, was the scale of the influence that the DNI should have within the Intelligence Community. Blair had walked the same tightrope as his predecessors had done on this with shots coming from all sides. If it hadn’t been for the standoff with Russia, the White House would long ago have replaced him with someone else. But he remained. The two principle issues which had beset his time as DNI were efforts to establish his office’s control over the CIA and also increased intelligence cooperation with France. The French issue was something new. That country’s president was a friend to America (not a poodle though) and far more willing to have his own intelligence agencies being cooperative with those of the United States than any of his predecessors had been. Blair and his French counterpart had pushed for France to join the Five Eyes: Six Eyes it would have been. Any Six Eyes organisation of intelligence sharing which included France would have to have been agreed to by the American’s four other existing partners – Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand – and there would be those who would push for another country instead of France to take the place: maybe Israel or Germany, possibly Singapore or South Korea. Domestically within the United States, it would be a big deal among politicians as well as the Intelligence Community. France just wasn’t trusted due to activities stretching back many decades. Therefore, for the time being Six Eyes wasn’t on the cards. Blair wanted it though and had made the effort to get the ball rolling… and thus made himself many domestic enemies while doing so.

Blair’s sort-of counterpart in Paris was Bernard Bajolet, a career civil servant and experienced diplomat who was Sarkozy’s ‘intelligence coordinator’. Internal politics within the French intelligence community were just as fierce as they were in Washington yet not out in the open. Bajolet didn’t have the enemies that Blair had. He had the confidence of his president: something that his American contemporary didn’t have. It was Bajolet who contacted Washington on the evening of August 6th making the call to Blair when it was one o’clock in the morning (thus August 7th) in Paris but only seven p.m. on the US East Coast. This phone call let the Americans know the basics of what was going on with the Russian defector inside the DGSE headquarters who had given warning of an incoming attack against NATO. Blair was informed that this information seemed to check out too with there already having been a sighting – directly based on what their defector was saying – of a Russian commando team ready & poised to strike at a French military base. Moreover, other information he was giving of knowledge of two more attacks due to hit France was fast being run-down while alerts were sent out. This defector, Bajolet impressed upon Blair, was saying that at some-point in the next few hours, Russian forces were going to strike against NATO in a full-scale war with attacks made in Eastern Europe where the frontlines of the conventional fight would be but also deep throughout their rear areas too. Blair asked about the DGSE’s ‘spy’ inside Russia – what was he saying? France had someone high-up in Moscow, Blair knew, though wasn’t privy to the details of that as that was the closest guarded secret of the DGSE. He and the US Intelligence Community believed that it was a Russian national – and France was happy to let them think that for it protected their man – rather than a Ukrainian military officer inside the Russian capital. Bajolet (who didn’t have all of the information on that himself for the details were need-to-know) could only tell the American on the other end of the connection that confirmation was being sought from that angle and nothing was yet available there. Regardless of that, Bajolet’s president was gravely concerned. France didn’t believe that this man was lying. An attack as feared and France was informing its ally. Blair asked whether Sarkozy was going to contact Obama and Bajolet replied that his president wanted to do just that. This information was being shared ahead of that to help with any confirmation which could come from the United States ahead of direct communication between the two presidents. Sarkozy was going to have the call set-up so the two men could talk within the next hour though – as things like this were often done between allies when important matters of state concerning intelligence were discussed – this call had come first. Blair would speak to his president and then get back to Bajolet soon; the Frenchman wished him well.


Sarkozy’s chief of staff had arranged with Emanuel another trans-Atlantic phone call and so the two presidents spoke after Obama had been briefed by Blair ahead of that. There were more calls for the American president to take tonight in Washington when both London and The Hague were in touch with him (each time, the British and Dutch prime ministers had their subordinates in the intelligence field call ahead first) concerning a worrying development in the North Sea with a ship inbound for Rotterdam. They were going to launch an emergency military operation against it soon enough and wanted the United States aware of this. Meanwhile, the national security team at the top level of the US Government assembled at the White House. Cars and even a helicopter brought members of the National Security Council here late on the Friday night. Vice President Biden was in California on an official trip but everyone else was called-in; Biden would be in contact through a video-conference once he reached Air Force Two which was waiting for him at Moffett Field. Clinton and Gates were present along with Admiral Mullen and General Jones. Also in attendance were the secretary of energy & treasury (Chu and Geithner were statutory attendees) along with White House regulars in the form of Emanuel, Brennan and Donilon. Blair turned up just after Panetta – his mortal enemy from the CIA – arrived. There were many people down in the basement of the White House.

They were here to discuss what was looking like the beginning of – in Sarkozy’s words when he’d spoken to Obama – Putin’s pre-emptive war.

The fact that this had all come from the French, and through Blair, poisoned the atmosphere of the whole thing. It shouldn’t have but there was politics at play even at this crucial moment. The French intelligence – the ‘so-called intelligence’ as it was deemed – was questioned because it came without a time for this attack and the French also refused to reveal the name of the defector in their DGSE headquarters; they did the latter to protect their source (as the CIA would have done) but it didn’t look good to those meeting in the White House. What was coming from the governments of Britain and the Netherlands had come through different channels (Gates and Panetta) so that did change things there yet, there remained the issue of the poisoned chalice which the DNI and his connections with France. Obama tried to move past that detail and push onwards. He demanded answers from his national security team instead of petty infighting on such a thing as this: Emanuel backed up the president’s even comments with some choice comments of his own about this not being the time for these personal disputes.

What was going on? Was Russia about to attack? If that was due, how could that be stopped?

The politicians, officials and military men debated this for some time. There were many ongoing discussions with many opinions given. Answers were needed though, not opinions. From across the Intelligence Community, some of those answers were sought with questions asked about what the NRO and the NSA were seeing. How about the CIA’s intelligence assets, what information could they give? The satellites and the communications taps were seeing and hearing what they had before with no changes. As to the CIA, there were no viable assets left of theirs inside Russia with any access to the top of the leadership. No one had any answers, just speculation and prejudices leading to opinions. When Biden came on the line, he had a suggestion to solve this issue where he saw everyone back in Washington as going around in circles.

Biden’s idea was to get Putin on the phone – or Kozak if not Putin – and ask him directly while promising him that if he does, it will be the biggest regret of his miserable life. There were a few attempts to raise objections to this approach but Obama had all of those dissenters cease their jabbering. The vice president had said what needed to be said. Obama said that this was what he wanted to see done.

Before it could be though, word came from Europe of what had happened with that Russian ship. It was a Dutch-led operation with active British participation yet NATO cooperation had come before and during the assault on the high seas during the early hours there. The assault team had taken the ship but faced casualties in doing so. From Admiral Stavridis at SHAPE in the Belgian countryside, the National Security Council was told that the Dutch had been met by gunfire during their approach and taken losses when aboard. They had done well but paid the price for it. Many of those within the ship were dead yet others had been taken prisoner: these were Russian nationals. In his opinion, they were Spetsnaz. These men weren’t on no pleasure cruise, not with all the weapons aboard and a ‘hostile attitude’ as per their reaction to the Dutch Navy helicopter. Stavridis stated that be believed that those Russians had been stopped before launching a commando action similar to what the defector in French custody had been talking about. He thus strongly recommended that the United States move to DEFCON Two.

In the Situation Room, where it was almost half past ten at night now, that recommendation was debated. DEFCON Two, plus also increasing the COGCON level too (that of Continuity of Government readiness condition: dispersing those in the presidential line of succession should the very worst happen), had its supporters and those who urged caution too. The latter had fewer voices of agreement than the former. If it had just been what the French were saying and nothing else, then that was one thing. But those Spetsnaz… Gates came out strongly for DEFCON Two and Biden agreed. With the two of them leading the way, others fell in line. Again though, there was a delay. This was caused by Clinton who was on the phone during the debate – multitasking as she gave her input in that – talking to the Dutch foreign minister. She told Obama that the Dutch chargé d'affaires in Moscow had already spoken by phone to the deputy foreign minister: he was saying that these men weren’t Russians and were probably terrorists. In addition, the Russian foreign ministry warned against ‘dangerous allegations’ being made. It was still early in Moscow but they were awake, taking urgent calls at such an ungodly hour and being extremely combative in their diplomatic relations. The question was asked as to whether the Dutch had been unable to contact Kozak and was that why they ended up talking to his deputy: Clinton confirmed that that was indeed the case.

The call that Biden had urged to be made to Putin or Kozak still hadn’t been attempted. Obama wanted that dealt with and he also gave the nod for DEFCON Two and COGCON One both to be enacted. Neither of these two alert status’ had ever gone that high before (worldwide that was with the former) but they were now. The president had decided that this had to be done. The Russians were out of control. There was no time for caution and the danger, even if he personally wasn’t so sure that Putin would have his war, was staring him in the face. He had to do all that he could to ensure the security of his country. Gates spoke to Stavridis and NATO’s commander affirmed that his party was leaving SHAPE any second now. There was a command-&-control aircraft waiting for NATO’s commander and his immediate staff at Chièvres Air Base. He’d be on it and he politely enquired as to when those in the White House were going to get out of there and stop sitting around talking!

They were leaving very soon, Gates said, very soon indeed.


HMX-1 was the squadron of US Marine Corps Aviation who provided available and secure airlift for the president and the country’s leadership. It had been alerted in the previous hours to be ready to make evacuations from the White House when the first news came of that ship that the Dutch were going to raid. Jones and his deputy Donilon both had pushed for the Marines to be ready and their urging on that had been justified with Obama’s order to now begin evacuating the White House. There was a VH-3D sitting on the White House lawn with others nearby waiting to join it once it was airborne with its VVIP passengers to form a shield around it in the sky. In addition, several cars (provided by the US Army; they did road transport for the president) were also on the White House grounds. The helicopter and those vehicles were all to take members of the country’s leadership out of here. The White House was a target for an attack and those inside were best off dispersed. Biden was elsewhere already and COGCON One called for the Congressional leadership plus others such as the Attorney General to be out of danger, that danger being in one fixed and known location. The evacuation procedures were designed to be perfect and practiced often. It was approaching eleven o’clock – gone dawn over in Eastern Europe now – when they started. They were disrupted at once though.

Clinton was due to leave the White House by car and be driven to the State Department. Chu, Geithner and Panetta had already left in their vehicles while Obama, Gates and Mullen were all taking Marine One to Andrews AFB where there was an aircraft waiting for them. When away from the White House, then the Russians would be spoken to and other measures enacted to avert open conflict. There was thought to be time to do this. However, into the Situation Room at the moment of evacuation came a call from Moscow. It was Kozak on the line wanting to talk to Clinton. Obama had instructed her to make the call to the Kremlin to get hold of Putin – or contact Kozak at the Russian Foreign Ministry if she was unable to reach the Russian President – once she reached the State Department. Now Kozak was calling here instead. The timing of the call should have rung alarm bells for how suspicious it was. It was almost as if someone wanted to throw a spanner into the works… Obama urged Clinton to come with him and return Kozak’s call from Andrews. Donilon, staying at the White House, would keep him on the line in the meantime and then transfer the call over there. The helicopter flight to Andrews would be faster than the drive to the State Department and therefore this would lessen the chances of Kozak giving up waiting. Maybe Clinton could have stayed at the White House and spoken to him from there but the urgency of the demand for evacuation following procedures led to this decision to being taken. Panetta, already on the move in an armed ground convoy, found out moments after he left that so many ‘principles’ were all going in one helicopter but he was unable to stop that from happening. He really didn’t like the idea of so much of the country’s leadership all being bunched up at once.

Onto Marine One along with Obama went Clinton along with Gates, Mullen, Jones, Brennan and Emanuel. They were supposed to be taking a short flight across to Andrews free from danger.

They wouldn’t make it to Andrews.


Inside Washington, a GRU commando team had been on stand-by for the past five days. There were ten men and three women – thirteen; unlucky to some, lucky for others – who had entered the country individually on commercial flights as well as overland. They had converged upon the American capital and collected weapons & equipment left waiting for them by others who had already departed less they be caught: the thirteen were expendable but those who’d already left weren’t regarded as such. Each member of the commando team, including the three women, had a particular job from communications interception to security to launching the actual attack. The target of their attack was any helicopter which left the White House grounds after twenty-three hundred hours on August 6th. They hadn’t been specifically told that it would contain the American president and they would be killing him yet none of their number was an idiot. They knew what they were doing. The Russian strike team members didn’t openly question their orders nor consider defecting. Each of them had several close family members who remained back home in the Rodina. A helicopter was spotted leaving the White House: it was Marine One getting airborne at two minutes past the hour. Unbeknown to the Russians here to kill, and those on the helicopter flying above them, half the world away a war had already started where armies would clash on land, fleets would engage each other at sea and flotillas of aircraft would fight in the skies. There was a different form of warfare taking place here though. Secret Service radio communications & also those of the US Marines had been intercepted – the Russian state had the means to do this; a terrorist or an assassin could just keep on dreaming – and night vision gear was used to observe from afar helicopter operations. Four other identical VH-3s which were orbiting above the White House as Marine One lifted off to join them, and thus be hidden among the others, were ignored as attention was on the one climbing. As it did so, one of the intercepted communications from the Secret Service which the GRU strike team distinctly heard was the reference ‘Renegade under way’: that was Obama’s Secret Service codename. From atop of two buildings, and also out on the street tonight, three of the Russians took specially-adapted SAM-launchers from sports bags: besides each missile operator was a comrade carrying a submachine gun. On cue from their mission commander, who was aided himself by his spotters, a trio of SAMs were lofted into the sky. These were laser-guided missiles and no radar-jammers, no deploy chaff and no fancy maneuvers would stop an attack like this with three of them – coming from several directions too – from having success. An escape for the GRU team would be a far greater challenge than taking down Marine One.

The pilot aboard Marine One was a damn fine flier. The US Marines officer had been under fire in combat and knew how to dodge incoming projectiles. That had occurred in a war zone though and with unguided bullets and rockets. Yet, he’d been trained to dodge missiles and gave it his best shot. The launch of the missiles was spotted by himself and his co-pilot as the rocket motors fired marked their launch. Direct sight of them was lost due to all of the lights on the ground and the sudden violent maneuvers undertaken to get Marine One, and its VVIP passengers, out of danger. As he swung to starboard, aiming to seek cover and going in the opposite direction from where he had seen the tell-tale signs of missile launches, there was nearly a collision with one of the other helicopters. Another VMX-1 helicopter moved to put itself between the area from where the launches had been sighted and Marine One was. Like the men and women on the ground making this attack, the crew of this VH-3 were expendable when the life of the nation’s president was at stake.

Marine One was no soft target. It had infrared jammers to defeat a missile attack as well as flares and chaff too which could be used to stop radar-guided missiles. The pilot and co-pilot were highly-trained to dodge an attack from either a missile or sustained gunfire. There was armour-plating as well at key points, lightweight Kevlar. The US Marines and Secret Service agents aboard were all armed so if it had to put down in a hostile environment, they would be able to defend the passengers too. This was all public information and considered by those who attacked the helicopter. One missile slammed into that VH-3 which put itself in the firing line and another failed to achieve a hit upon any helicopter. The third missile hit Marine One. It struck the cabin and the explosive charge went off there. This was no ordinary explosive but instead a specialist incendiary weapon. The cabin was ripped open and a fireball erupted within: the pilot and co-pilot were incinerated. Meanwhile, the helicopter which they had been flying fell from the sky. It crashed moments later when it came down nose-first into The Ellipse, the public park just south of the White House. The time was just after four minutes past eleven.


“Renegade Down, I say again, Renegade is down!” – Another radio message from the Secret Service intercepted that night, this one by the GRU listening post at the Russian embassy.

“Oh my God…” – The words of an inebriated tourist up from Florida, out on Constitution Avenue who had a burning helicopter come crashing down seemingly only a few yards away from him and his wife.

“No. Just tell me it isn’t true, please.” – Comment attributed to Joe Biden aboard Air Force Two in the skies over Nevada when he was told that Marine One was down in Washington.


Marine One had fifteen people aboard when it hit the ground.

These were the President of the United States, the Secretaries of State & Defence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security & Homeland Security Advisers, the White House Chief-of-Staff & the president’s personal aide, four Secret Service agents and three US Marines as the aircrew.

Rescuers, including Secret Service agents running with guns drawn from the White House grounds, would pull three of those alive from the burning helicopter though one of those, Brennan, who’d been Obama’s Homeland Security Advisor, would die before he reached the hospital. The two others were one of those agents aboard and Bob Gates too, each of them severely hurt with life-changing injuries. Marine One burnt furiously during that rescue attempt of those aboard. One of the rescuers would lose his life and another two would be badly injured. Try as they might, they couldn’t pull anyone else out of the helicopter which was on its side with the front crumpled in. When the DC Fire Department got water on the fire, it took a long time indeed for that to have any meaningful effect. The fire destroyed the helicopter and many the bodies of those trapped inside.

Barack Obama, the nation’s forty-fourth president, was dead.

And the United States was at war.



Those aboard Marine One:
#1: Barack Obama, United States President, dead
#2: Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State, dead
#3: Bob Gates, Secretary of Defence, injured
#4: Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dead
#5: Jim Jones, National Security Adviser, dead
#6: John Brennan, Homeland Security Adviser, dead
#7: Rahm Emanuel, White House Chief-of-Staff, dead
#8: Reggie Love, personal aide to the president, dead
#9 & #10 & #11 & #12: Secret Service agents, three dead & one injured
#13 & #14 & 15: US Marine aircrew, all dead

Forty-Seven

The plan for Operation Slava required NATO airpower to be if not eliminated then at least significantly degraded in the opening hours of the war. Bear & Backfire bombers under the command of Russian long Range Aviation (DA) had the task of achieving this in conjunction with the Spetsnaz strikes. There had been some eleventh-hour hopes amongst the bomber crews that their mission would be cancelled and that war would be averted altogether, but most of the men flying the bombers new that it was far too late for that to happen and had prepared themselves accordingly. The operation which they were about to fly had been practiced on a smaller scale, but the coordination of so many aircraft flying sorties against so many different targets was something that was virtually impossible to prepare for. There were four groups of Bears & Backfires dedicated to a massive cruise missile strike which was to be initiated at right before dawn on August 7th.

*

Group #1 consisted of fourteen Bears. They had taken off from airfields around western Russia, and the pilots had skilfully grouped their aircraft into formation in the skies over Belarus.

These aircraft never strayed from Belarusian airspace as they began their mission. The bombers concealed themselves behind a cloud of electronic radar jamming in an effort to hide their presence from NATO ground-based radars in Poland and E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft further west over Polish airspace. NATO fighters – Polish F-16s and, somewhat ironically, Russian-built MiG-29s in the service of the Polish Air Force, along with American F-22A Raptors – patrolled the skies over the Polish-Belarusian border, but until the first shots were fired they were under strict orders not to enter Belarusian airspace, thus allowing the Bears to launch all of their missiles.

Those bombers each launched eight KH-55 cruise missiles, or as NATO would call them, AS-15 Kents. The missiles were loaded with high-explosive and runway-cratering warheads, designed to render NATO airfields inoperable at least on a temporary basis. They streaked away from the Bears and disappeared into the dawn sky, aimed at numerous airfields in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Hundreds of NATO warplanes were crammed into those airfields and soon after the initial missile launches, an enormous effort was made to scramble those aircraft and get them away from their bases. Though NATO planners back in Brussels didn’t expect the initial strike to involve nuclear weapons, it was a possibility that had to be considered and planned for. A pair of NATO AWACS birds, one over North-Western Poland and another over Prague, detected over a hundred inbound cruise missiles and vectored in the Falcons, Fulcrums, and Raptors to intercept them; it was too late to go after the bombers. Splashing those missiles was what counted now! Radar and communications jamming by Russian air and ground elements, as well as the sheer speed of the inbound Kents made that a difficult task though. Plenty of missiles were shot down before they could reach their targets, firstly by fighters and then by American and German-manned Patriot missile batteries set up around major Allied airfields in Eastern Europe. Over two thirds of the missiles got through the hasty NATO defence effort, however, and slammed into their targets.

Poland saw its 21st Tactical Air Base, located right outside Świdwin, damaged by missile strikes. Jets from the air forces of Germany, France, Great Britain and the United States were all stationed their alongside Polish aircraft, and explosions devastated numerous aircraft hangers, fuel and ammunition storage dumps, and barracks as well. Similarly, the 22nd Tactical Air Base in Malbork was hit hard by the Kents, along with the 23rd Air Base further south near Mińsk Mazowiecki. Finally, the 31st Tactical Air Base received the attention of Kents, with those missiles cratering the main runway of the airbase and killing dozens of servicemen and women.

Further south, Zvolenska Air Base near Prague was hit. That facility, further from the frontlines that other bases, was a focal point for NATO support aircraft, such as tankers and electronic warfare planes; many of these valuable jets had gotten off the ground in time to escape destruction, but terrible damage was still wrought. The final target for missiles launched from the Bears over Belarus was Presov Air Base down in Slovakia. Spanish F/A-18 Hornets as well as German Tornado strike jets were stationed there, and several of these aircraft that had been unable to scramble in time were destroyed, while fires raged as missiles hit their hardened aircraft shelters and supply facilities.

This attack had been largely successful despite the failure of the Kents to knock out any of the AWACS planes deployed in the Czech Republic. It wasn’t truly devastating, but was more of a nuisance attack aimed at rocking the alliance back on its heels, levelling the playing field for Russia’s smaller air force in a tactical sense. Many buildings were left burning and runways cratered, but all of the targets struck by Group #1 were still capable of launching combat operations against Russia.

*

Group #2 consisted of six of the smaller, faster Tu-22M Backfires. They were far more survivable aircraft, being capable of flying at supersonic speeds and having a far smaller radar signature than the Bears did. They carried shorter-ranged cruise missiles, with each bomber carrying ten KH-15s as opposed to the larger KH-55s. Named the AS-16 Kickback by NATO intelligence, these missiles had originally been designed to carry nuclear warheads, but today they had purely conventional payloads. The Backfires launched their missiles at four targets in Denmark and Northern Germany. Already, Luftwaffe Typhoon fighters were on their way to intercept, and the Russian jets went to afterburners and fled back eastwards immediately after firing their missiles. Still, it wasn’t enough to save two of the aircraft, which plummeted into the Baltic Sea after being taken out by long-range air-to-air missiles fired by the German fighters.

Screaming in over the coast, numerous Kickbacks slammed into Aalborg and Karup Air Bases, housing F-16s of the Royal Danish Air Force. There were other bases in Denmark that could have been targeted, but these facilities were seen as the most vital and given the smaller number of missiles allocated to this element of Operation Slava, planners at the Russian Defence Ministry wanted to hit those important bases first; other targets in Denmark could be taken out at a later date if that was deemed necessary.

The RDAF was unable to shoot down any of those incoming missiles, and all twenty-six of them hit their targets. Men and women dived for cover as they impacted, with the massive explosions sending fragments of burning metal flying into the darkness. Dozens of personnel on the ground died at Aalborg and Karup, but nevertheless, many of the Royal Danish Air Force F-16s were able to take to the skies after a brief period of reconstitution, with few of the aircraft themselves being destroyed.

More missiles came in over the Baltic coastline of Germany. They were launched at Schleswig Air Base as well as Rostock-Laage International Airport, which despite being a civilian airport also held a military role. The objective of targeting these to airfields was to harass NATO air forces there and prevent them from intervening further north or east. There were more German Tornados based at both Schleswig and Rostock-Laage, as well as US Air Force F-16s and some French Mirage-2000s. Most of the jets escaped destruction either by getting into the air or by remaining in hardened aircraft shelters. Some didn’t though. At the latter target, a trio of American F-16s was annihilated by a Kickback that struck the centre aircraft on a taxiway, whilst a German C-130 transport plane – thankfully empty apart from the crew – was struck by another missile at Schleswig Air Base.

*

Over the North Sea, Group #3 was not so lucky.

The six Bears that had been assigned to strike targets in the Netherlands and Western Germany would never launch their missiles. A pair of Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s flying Combat Air Patrol (CAP) along the coastline were vectored toward the bombers, which were totally helpless against fighters crewed by well-trained pilots with excellent air-to-air missiles at their disposal.

The two F-16s attained missile locks on the lead Bears and fired their AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAMs) at them. Predictably, the two lumbering Russian bombers were knocked out of the sky in a ball of fire. Another bomber was shot down by a third AMRAAM. Then the Dutch fighters moved in, this time firing heat-seeking missiles at a much closer range, knocking down another two Bears.

The final Bear pilot jinked and dived his aircraft in a hopeless effort to avoid destruction; he was shot down by cannon fire from the F-16s which sheared off the bomber’s wing and sent it spiralling into the North Sea. Other F-16s were scrambled both from Holland and from Belgium, but to the disappointment of their pilots, the Bears over the North Sea had all be neutralised.

Not one single missile would strike Holland or Western Germany that morning thanks to the efforts of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, who had achieved the first air-to-air kills of World War III.

*

Eight more Bears flew down over Norway and neared the airspace of the United Kingdom. They had avoided US Navy and Royal Norwegian Air Force fighter patrols, aided by the successful jamming efforts of electronic warfare aircraft all the way back over the Kola Peninsula. The Atlantic Ocean was a very big place indeed and avoiding Allied air defences was something that the Bear pilots had practiced countless times. These Bears, like the ones that had struck at Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia moments earlier, carried the longer-ranged AS-15 Kents as their primary (and only) weapons. Launching their missiles from over a thousand kilometres away from British airspace, those bombers were easily able to evade any sort of defence that the Royal Air Force could have mounted had they seen the bombers coming. Radar stations in Scotland and along the coast of East Anglia tracked the incoming missiles and passed that information onto the UK’s own air defence network as well as the American Patriot missile battery commanders stationed around US Air Force bases in Britain. A trio of targets were to be struck that summer morning. British and American air defences reduced the number of incoming missiles by over a quarter, but far too many would still get through.

RAF Lakenheath, despite its name, was a US Air Force facility, housing the F-15Cs and F-15Es of the US 48th Fighter Wing, making it a crucial target; a dozen missiles hit this massive American airbase, lighting up the Norfolk countryside with explosions. Tragically, a C-17 carrying men from the US Air Force was hit as it taxied towards a hardened aircraft shelter, with that explosion killing eighty-seven men and women; more damage was done when the main control tower took a direct missile hit.

RAF Fairford, another American-run base, housed B-52H strategic bombers belonging to US Air Force Global Strike Command. Here the defenders had done well and the bombers had been sheltered to the best standard that they could have been; none of the ancient B-52s – older, like the Bears, than most of the men and women who flew them – were destroyed although some suffered minor damage. However, significant damage was done to the airbase facilities, with numerous taxiways and runways cratered and buildings destroyed.

Finally, RAF Marham, one of the Royal Air Forces’ largest facilities, was hit. Royal Air Force Typhoons and Tornados took to the skies to avoid destruction, leaving personnel on the ground to fend for themselves; an effort was made by RAF pilots to intercept the Kents but little could ultimately be done with those missiles flying so low and at such high speeds. Hangers and storage depots crumpled under massive explosions and yet more damage was done, but Marham, like most other targets, remained a functional airbase.

*

Russia's initial strike had been largely successful despite the annihilation of Group #3 by the Dutch. Russian planners knew they weren’t going to be able to destroy NATO’s air forces with cruise missiles alone; the idea of the strike was to wreak as much havoc as possible and cause casualties on a large scale, slowing down the pace of NATO air operations and buying time for the Russian Ground Forces to push out into Baltic States, Poland and Norway.

In that respect, the goal had been achieved.





Forty–Eight

NATO fighters and even the US Army’s Patriot missiles could engage air-launched cruise missiles fired by Russian bombers yet there was no defence available against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles fired from mobile launchers on land. The speed, ballistic arc and the closeness of launch point to target area negated any defence against them. From out of Russia proper, the Kaliningrad region and Belarus, missiles came. They crashed into a wide variety of targets through the Baltic States and Poland. The missiles used were the newer Iskanders and the older Tochkas. There were a lot of them used and fired off in a series of short barrages with a few at a time. The gaps between the waves of incoming missiles occurred when the mobile launchers from which they were fired changed locations to relaunch. However, different units were involved in this and it allowed for an extended period of launches where they came with an overall regular fury. In the end though, the missiles stopped coming. Russia didn’t have an endless supply of them. Over a hundred had been fired as a target list was worked down and while there were more, these were being saved for further missions in the following hours, days and weeks. The barrage was over with but only for now.

It hadn’t been perfect. There had been all sorts of problems with the attack. It was all very complicated where a strict series of orders was meant to be followed. Incompetence, faulty equipment and just plain bad luck had affected the firings of them. The Iskanders were used as magic bullets to hit the most-important targets and did well yet not all of them worked as advertised. A lot of disappointment came with the Tochkas. In recent years, many systems within the launchers had been upgraded and the crews had had much recent training. These weapons had long been stored though and not all of them had been stored correctly. The range on these missiles had been something that the Russians had sought to artificially increase ahead of their use. During the build-up to military action, the rocket brigades transferred towards Russia’s western borders and into Belarus had been kept some distance back from the border with the launchers & supporting vehicles at staging sites. Over the night of August 6th / 7th, they had moved forward. They were tasked to go right up to the frontiers of the nations which they fired into and launch from there. Detachments of personnel with radio beacons – simple technology, nothing fancy – were waiting at pre-scouted sites. This gave the missiles that extra range. Not all firing teams reached those sites though. There would be hell to pay for them; couldn’t they read a damn map? Accuracy within the missiles themselves was good, especially the Iskanders, but never perfect. Some of these expensive weapons were wasted where they missed their targets by distances great and small.

Like the ballistic missiles, an artillery barrage came. For decades, NATO military personnel had been trained to ride out Soviet and then Russian artillery barrages in wartime scenarios. How do you train men for such a thing though when Soviet-Russian doctrine was to use so many guns all at once? There were NATO troops who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years and been under fire before… but nothing compared to what the Russians unleashed on the first morning of the war. Like they did with their missile-launchers, they brought their artillery forward to sites right up on the border in the hours of darkness – there were fantastic errors of navigation here too – and then opened fire. Barrages commenced with batteries and battalions opening fire and then motoring off to new sites. The Russians (and the Belorussians too) used self-propelled weapons for this while keeping their less-mobile, towed guns back for the time being. What they feared was counter-battery fire yet they weren’t firing off one shell and retreating: instead they fired many before departing for a new location. It wasn’t just shells being sent westwards either. These artillery units contained howitzers as well as heavy mortars and multiple-barrelled rocket-launchers (MLRS) too. The crash of the guns was continuous. The first big barrages were followed by weaker ones in terms of numbers of projectiles fired though it was kept up in the form of putting a lot of artillery upon the targets. Modern artillery was capable of a lot. Howitzers would raise their barrels high to fire their first shell and then slowly lower it each time as another was fired. Done right, this would bring many shells down on one target all at once and from the same gun. The MLRS’ fired a pre-loaded ‘package’ of rockets and had another set moved into place with ease to fire them off: there was no individual loading of twelve or sixteen rockets ahead of firing. Different types of warheads were used from conventional high-explosive fragmentation projectiles to anti-armour submunitions to aerial-scattered mines. Some weapons blew up on contact with the ground, others detonated at various altitudes. Some ‘special’ artillery was used as well in the form of a sort-of MLRS system known as the TOS-1. This was often called by the Russians a flamethrower. It fired thermobaric and fuel-air explosive rockets in a thirty-projectile barrage. Few of these systems were available and their range was short, but they had quite the effect where used.

The missiles and artillery were used in a tactical form. They were fired up and down the frontlines over which war was about to come yet also stretching backwards while retaining the tactical nature of their use still. The Isklanders were especially useful in the rear though some of the big howitzers could stretch pretty far too. Other weapons were used closer-in. The aim of this all was to blast open entrance ways into the Baltic States and Poland for attacking units as well as to pin down enemy units out of the immediate vicinity of where those attacks were coming so they could be later moved against. Heads were to be kept down and those on the receiving end left frightened as well. That was the aim here: shock and awe. Once the big opening barrages were done with, the artillery systems would move with attacking forces going forward and firing from inside occupied land. They would be broken up too where attached to operational commands rather than centralised. Some of them would be going very far forward indeed with the majority of the attacking forces who were now kept back from the frontlines and watching from afar the crescendo of fire on the horizon which all of this created.

Others were moving forward though under the cover of this barrage. Scouting units were striking out ahead and penetrating the borders to enter hostile territory ahead. There were armoured columns as well as dismounted men on foot (many Spetsnaz teams). Others used light vehicles, helicopters and transport aircraft: with the latter, no big parachute jumps were made even with two airborne units in-place but smaller ones were made still. Russian and Belorussian forces crossed into Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. Deterrence had failed and NATO countries were being directly invaded.


In the days leading up to the war, when many were convinced that it was certain to come regardless of what was done, others had been determined to see it stop. Extraordinary diplomatic efforts were made through international organisations, bi-lateral contacts and even unsupported lone contacts. Games had been played by the Kremlin in some of this too where they tried to deceive many – meeting success in some places and failure elsewhere – that the crisis could be averted. At SHAPE in Belgium (where war came directly to them) and also at the CJTF-East headquarters in Krakow, there was none of that delusion and false hope. The generals and political staffers assigned reported back to their governments that from what information was being gathered and funnelling into them, war was coming. This was listened to by some in distant capitals yet, shamefully, ignored in others: there were just some people who couldn’t, wouldn’t accept that fact ahead of it actually happening. From SHAPE and Krakow, they saw a massive gathering of enemy forces positioned to the east. Moscow and Minsk were play-acting with their fears of a NATO invasion – who could imagine such a thing? – and, it was decided, getting ready to attack. They saw all of those missile-launchers (being taken in by many inflatable dummies too though) and massed artillery. They also observed all of the enemy armour present. Russian maskirovka efforts here to conceal what they had fooled NATO intelligence. It was not though in the manner directly foreseen. NATO overestimated what was present. All of that moving of equipment around and all of the false radio signals – low-hanging fruit for the West’s ace in the hole which was its intelligence-gathering capability – gave a false impression that what was present was larger than it actually was. The joint Russian-Belorussian force was big but not a dozen heavy divisions big! On their intelligence charts, NATO staffers had given their opponent an army which they could only field with much more time. The intelligence was collected properly but analysed incorrectly. In some ways, it was better to be safe than sorry. Later, NATO would correct itself here and realise that all of those mobilisation-only units were yet to move away from garrisons and not in the field at the beginning of the war. Until then though, they were believed to be active.

The outbreak of war brought immediate orders in reaction to this perceived greater strength. Those orders were for NATO forward units to withdraw. It was to be a fighting withdrawal, and one to bloody the enemy to make them pay dearly for moving forward, but a withdrawal it would be nonetheless. It was empathically not a retreat! NATO forces were spread too thin and they could pull back to concentrate. As the Russians and Belorussians spread out, NATO would bring its air and ground units into play in a joint effort. The invaders would be shown what combined arms warfare was really done.

Not all NATO units under CJTF-East command, led by the US Army’s General Petraeus would retreat – some of them just couldn’t –, but the majority would. Admiral Stavridis had this already as standing policy and from his aircraft above Belgium (far away from the gunfight at his headquarters below), the signal was sent to Petraeus. There had been a respectfully dispute over this in recent days where Petraeus, further forward and personally unsure that the Russians had this in them, had questioned Stavridis on this approach. It did make strategic sense and was something that SACEUR’s subordinate wanted to do in reaction to an incoming attack, but he didn’t want to withdraw so fast straight away. He had in fact argued that many forward-deployed units should be withdrawn earlier while at the same time keeping others in-place to ride out the first opening Russian attack. The information that SHAPE had had been causing alarm there though. It was realised by both men that this was going to cause problems of a diplomatic nature. The Poles were going to go mad as their territory was abandoned to occupation… and the Baltic States governments were going to see themselves physically cut off. Petraeus was able to get a concession from Stavridis where for as long as possible the Suwalki Gap would be contested – two good units in the form of the US 2nd Cav’ and the Polish brigade of paratroopers – in a mobile battle, but elsewhere there would be that withdrawal. They weren’t going far, it wasn’t as if NATO was pulling back to Germany or anything like that, but the forward positions were to be withdrawn from from as the Russian-Belorussian force moved forward to take ground.

The orders went out. Some units didn’t get them while others did and chose to ignore them: in the latter category, that was many Polish formations. Radio jamming of signals came alongside refusals to retreat from sovereign soil. Elsewhere though, the majority of NATO units forward deployed started to withdraw. The Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, spread across northern Poland, pulled its British and most of its Polish troops back. The Americans with the US V Corps all retreated but one of the two Polish divisions there didn’t pull back away from the Belorussian border; the German airmobile brigade there didn’t get the order due to intensive jamming as well as being in the way of several successful Iskander hits on its own communications. This was Poland; things were even worse on the ground in the Baltic States. Here there was little room to withdraw and no willingness on the part of the local forces to do so. Command arrangements here were poor in the form of individual brigades all reporting to Krakow directly rather than through a divisional or corps headquarters. This was something which had been put off being sorted out with politics a factor in it. Even if it had been, so many local commanders here refused to take a step back. They would defend every square meter of their hard-won territorial integrity! With them up here though, in Estonia and Latvia, the Americans had their paratroopers and there was that mixed NATO brigade. They were both right in the firing line of tanks coming at them from ahead and with the (false) expectation that soon enough Russian airborne and amphibious troops would be striking at them from the rear. They were quickly going to be cut off with no one coming to rescue them. What a bad day they were about to have.

Fifty-One

The fighting along the northern approaches to Tallinn was short but extremely violent. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, had been deployed to cover the northern side of Lake Peipus alongside the Estonian Land Forces’ 1st Infantry Brigade in a short-sighted and somewhat foolhardy gamble aimed at preventing a war from breaking out rather than actually fighting one.

1st Battalion, 73rd Cavalry Regiment – the 2nd BCT’s reconnaissance force – was positioned just west of Johvi, defending the town of roughly ten thousand people from foxholes and bunkers. The local civilian population had aided the Americans in building tank-traps and laying concertina wire; against any other foe, it would have been an impressive series of obstacles. The 138th Motorised Rifle Brigade, under the command of the Twentieth Guards Army, had punched through the border town of Narva with barely a shot being fired, and besides a series of roadside ambushes mounted by the Estonian Defence League, had faced little resistance until meeting the Americans, whom they clashed with shortly before dawn.

The initial skirmishes went surprisingly well for the hopelessly outgunned paratroopers of the 2nd Brigade’s reconnaissance battalion, with well-hidden paratroopers using Javelin shoulder-fired missiles to knock out three BRDM scout vehicles and a BTR-80. Nevertheless, the American positions were soon ferreted out by Mi-28N attack helicopters, which used their unguided rockets as opposed to their AT-6 Spiral (in NATO parlance) anti-tank missiles. Soon enough the 1st of the 73rd Cavalry was withdrawing westwards, covered by a small and largely ineffective bombardment from the 105mm light guns of the 2nd Battalion, 319th Field Artillery Regiment. Russian artillery units were quick to pounce, opening fire with much larger 152mm guns in a massive counter-battery bombardment. Soon enough, the American guns fell silent as they were either destroyed or forced to move rapidly to secondary firing positions. Following the shock of the initial skirmishes, the American commander on the ground attempted to reconvene his forces further west. After the terrible losses suffered by the 1st of the 73rd, he had little hope of holding onto Tallinn in the face of overwhelming enemy firepower.

The Americans fell back before even meeting the T-72s of the 138th Motor Rifle Brigade, pulling back to a secondary pre-planned defensive line running through the dense woodlands of the Laheemaa National Park. Here, the Americans hoped that their opponents would be forced to dismount to clear the forest, thus negating the advantages of the Russian tanks whilst simultaneously preventing an advance down the E-20 Highway, the major road from the Russian border to Tallinn. However, it was not to be. Meanwhile, the Estonian Defence League put up a significant fight to defend Rakvere, buying time for the Americans to withdraw at significant cost to themselves, with the defenders, along with the townspeople, taking murderous casualties from sustained artillery barrages as the day wore on. As they moved westwards to the National Park, Russian Su-25s made several strikes with unguided cluster munitions against the withdrawing American troops, causing severe casualties amongst the infantrymen. Attack helicopters carried out further attacks with intense rocket and cannon fire directed onto American troops. Air support for NATO ground troops in the Baltic States was supremely lacking, with sophisticated SAM systems covering the three countries from Russia, Belarus and Kaliningrad and making any attempt at close air support extremely costly.

The 138th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade would not, however, hit the main American positions in force until early afternoon, when T-72 tanks and BMP-2s came thundering down E-20. Preceding the advance by the ground troops, however, was an artillery bombardment on a truly unprecedented scale. As well as using 152mm howitzers, the Russians utilised BM-21 multiple rocket launching systems (MLRS), relics of the 1960s but still highly effective against infantry. Hundreds of projectiles seemed to descend upon the Americans from the heavens, striking the ground indiscriminately as the paratroopers dove for cover. Members of the 1st Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment, suffered the most, with nearly two thirds of their number becoming casualties as a result of the bombardment. Su-25s repeatedly bombed the Americans, although a pair of the aircraft was shot down by US Army troops using Stinger missiles. Russian infantrymen dismounted their BTRs and BMPs, storming into the woodlands as the weakened defenders struggled to mount effective resistance. Both sides of the E-20 highway became the sites of heavy fighting. The initial lunges made by the Russians were, in fact, probes meant to locate the weak points in the line. The U.S. paratroopers gave a good account of themselves, pushing back several infantry assaults by Russian troops, coordinating their defence and forcing the Russians into pre-planned kill-zones. However, along the tree line on the eastern side of the woods, where the 2nd of the 508th Infantry was located, a full mechanised battalion of the 138th Brigade charged into the fray, racking the American foxholes with cannon fire from their 30mm guns. Several BMPs were destroyed as American soldiers fought back with anti-tank missiles, using Javelins and grenades in an attempt to offset the superior firepower of the Russian mechanised units. More infantry came pouring through the gap in the line created by the BMPs, overrunning the whole battalion before they could withdraw. Hundreds of soldiers were killed where they stood. In this type of fighting, beneath the trees and with smoke drifting through the air, taking prisoners was a rare thing. Whole squads and even platoons were cut down where they stood as they attempted to surrender, with the 1st of the 508th being completely destroyed. Grenades were thrown into foxholes and fighting devolved into hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and entrenching tools.

The only consolation of such brutal fighting was that US units were fighting so close to their attackers that the Russians couldn’t utilise their air or artillery support for fear of hitting their own men. Having secured the northern side of the woodlands, the commander of the 138th Brigade sent his heavy armour barrelling down the main highway. Heavy fighting was still ongoing along the southern side of the road, but the Americans there – members of the 2nd Battalion, 325th Infantry – were too distracted by the waves of infantry coming towards them through the burning woodlands to be able to engage the tanks coming down the road. The defenders had hoped to form a kill-zone along the highway by funnelling enemy armour down the road before using their remaining anti-tank missiles and calling in whatever air support could be summoned.

With the failure of this plan, all hope for 2/82nd Airborne was lost. With the highway secured, Russian forces poured through the gap in the 2nd Brigade’s lines, effectively encircling the US Army units still fighting in the woodlands. Within an hour of making it through the main defensive line, T-72 tanks were closing on the field headquarters company, along with 2nd Brigade’s engineer battalion, support battalion, and shattered artillery battalion. Those support troops fought back harder than the Russians had expected, but they were facing overwhelming firepower superiority. As tank shells began thundering down around his command post, the commanding officer of the Falcon Brigade ordered his staff to begin destroying communications equipment and documents, while a hastily-devised and short-lived defence was mounted by engineers and support staff. Hundreds of these soldiers were cut down by machinegun fire from the advancing tanks. These men and women died fighting to buy time for the 2nd Brigade’s communications equipment and classified information that could give the Russians an even bigger advantage.

It took only a matter of minutes for the fight to be over. The colonel commanding the brigade – himself wounded by shrapnel from an earlier artillery attack – staggered out of the command tent amidst burning vehicles and the sound of gunfire as the final, scattered pockets of US resistance was mopped up. Waving a white flag, the commanding officer offered his surrender to the Russians, bringing an end to the slaughter. Of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team’s 4,400 members, nearly fifteen hundred were dead in just a single afternoon of fighting, with nearly twice that number captured; a few would escape into the wilderness, but even fewer of them would evade captivity or death forever.

The road to Tallinn was forced open and the 138th Motorised Rifle Brigade charged towards the Estonian capital.

*

Meanwhile, the Estonian Land Forces were under attack from the south.

The 76th Guards Air Assault Division had launched its offensive directly from its peacetime bases around Pskov, under heavy air cover. The paratroopers with the 76th Guards Division were the elite of the Russian Armed Forces, serving under the command of the VDV rather than that of the Ground Forces. For the purposes of Operation Slava, however, the 76th Guards Air Assault Division was operating as a unit attached to the 20th Guards Army, the main Russian formation with the responsibility for invading Estonia and Latvia. There were Russian tank divisions driving north-west across Latvia under that Army’s command, but the paratroopers with the 76th Guards Division were going into Estonia – the Baltic country in the militarily weakest position – to eliminate Estonian forces defending the southern border with Russia.

There were battalion-sized helicopter assaults on a pair of locations along Highway Route Three, which stretched right the way across central Estonia. In addition, there was a battalion-size parachute assault that was also planned to take place along this highway. The 104th Guards Air Assault Regiment made these assaults, jumping mainly from Il-76 Candid transport planes and landing from helicopters flying at low altitude. At Tartu, Estonia’s second city, a battalion of the 104th Regiment landed at daybreak on the city’s airport. The jump didn’t go perfectly; sometimes men fell off course or were killed and injured as they landed or when their parachutes failed to open. Estonian soldiers with the newly-formed 2nd Infantry Brigade managed to down one Candid with a Russian-made man-portable air defence system. The aircraft plummeted out of the sky in flames, killing the many paratroopers who didn’t manage to bail out before it impacted the ground. Enough soldiers did land safely though. There was a brutal fight within Tartu as the Russian battalion seized the city from the Estonian Defence League. Those Estonian soldiers put up a fierce fight, but, like the Americans in the north, found themselves hopelessly outgunned. Russian Frogfoot attack aircraft contributed mightily to the paratroopers’ firepower, launching repeated attacks from the air which left much of the city in flames, with few fire-fighters available to put out the fires.

Another battalion landed by helicopter, descending into the undefended woodlands between Tartu and the border with Latvia. The 104th Guards’ third battalion ended up in a major fight further east, where they ran into Estonian troops from the 1st Infantry Brigade. They had arrived in lumbering, unarmed Mi-26 Halo transport helicopters with a number of Havocs for cover. Two of those Havocs were shot down by MANPADs as was a third Halo, as the other troopers struggled to disembark from their aircraft under heavy fire. The only thing that saved the Russian paratroopers was the presence of airmobile BMD-2 infantry fighting vehicles, whose firepower was able to prevent the utter destruction of the whole battalion. Their objective was seized after an hour of fighting, but heavy casualties were inflicted on the attackers and the battalion would soon have to be pulled off of the line to allow for replacements to be inducted into the unit. Up to forty percent of the battalion’s personnel were killed and most who survived were wounded in one way or another.

As their comrades from the 104th Regiment went into action both by helicopter and by parachute, men from the 76th Division’s 234th Guards Air Assault Regiment crossed the border in a massive helicopter assault. An immense artillery bombardment from the 1140th Artillery Regiment, joined by the heavier guns attached to the Twentieth Guards Army, preceded this advance. Defensive lines dug by the 2nd Infantry Brigade of the Estonian Land Forces were shattered by repeated bombardments, causing many casualties. Spetsnaz teams attacked mobile command posts, often failing to actually overwhelm their targets but nonetheless sewing confusion into the Estonian ranks. The 234th Regiment’s men flew into Estonia in Mi-17 Hip transport/light attack helicopters and Mi-24 Hind gunships. The Hips could carry a whole squad of riflemen while the Hind gunships has a lesser transport ability but bore much more firepower than the other aircraft. Fencers & Frogfoots accompanied those helicopters from above, locating targets below them and opening fire with rockets and bombs.

The 2nd Infantry Brigade was caught in a trap between the 104th Regiment along Highway Three and the 234th Regiment’s frontal helicopter assault. They wouldn’t have retreated even if they could have though; this was their homeland and they were going to stand and fight. The resistance put up by the 2nd Brigade was gallant but ultimately it achieved nothing other than inflicting a few more casualties on the advancing Russians. Russian soldiers disembarked from their helicopters under heavy fire from Estonian troops, moving out on foot or in BMD-2s to storm the trenches occupied by their enemies. The helicopters circled high above like birds of prey, hunting for signs of resistance. A series of forest fires were ignited by Hinds using napalm weapons to eliminate Estonian troops hidden in the woodlands, while soldiers below fought with not only rifles but hand-to-hand weapons as well when the ammunition ran out. Few Estonian soldiers allowed themselves to be taken prisoner; they had been told countless stories about the brutality of the last occupation of their homeland by parents and grandparents, and they weren't about to lay down their weapons and allow that to happen again. The Russians had to clear out the defiant Estonian infantrymen foxhole-by-foxhole, bleeding themselves dry in the process of doing so. Eventually, though, the overwhelming superiority of the Russian forces achieved victory. The fight was far from bloodless, leaving the 234th Regiment with a number of casualties to attend to, but ultimately the 76th Division’s goals in Estonia were achieved; that result had been an inevitability really, given the disparity in firepower between Russian and Estonian forces.





Fifty–Two

Denmark was a sideshow and so was Norway. Even Estonia was a diversion – an important one, yes – when it came to the main effort where Russian focused its war in Europe. That focus was with the advance through the two other Baltic States and Poland too. Operation Slava would be won with success in that… or Russia would lose its war regardless of anything happening elsewhere. Following the missile & artillery strikes which commenced at H-Hour, and hot on the heels of the forward recon units, Russian & Belorussian heavy forces moved forward.


Pouring into Latvia was the Russian Twentieth Guards Army. On its right wing, units under command attacked Estonia yet the main effort was to strike westwards into Latvia and then turn southwards through Lithuania afterwards. Two heavy divisions along with that third regiment from the airborne division involved in Estonia took part as the main combat-manoeuvre elements of this. Latvian forces on the border were in the way of an armoured steamroller which was quick to show no mercy to those who dared oppose them. There were some US Green Berets with those Latvians and in the way too. They stood no chance and could only try to escape.

Russia’s 10th Guards Tank Division – organised with two motor rifle regiments and two tank regiments rather than one and three respectively – tore forward. The border defences were run through and they moved deep into Latvia. Link-ups were made with scouting units and firefights met. The Daugava River was where they headed towards, aiming to reach crossing sites ahead grabbed by reconnaissance elements. There was no significant Latvian opposition to this advance: their troops were elsewhere. NATO’s Baltic Mechanised Brigade was between the Russia armour and the river though. It was midday when the 10th Division clashed with the mixed group of enemy soldiers. The fight occurred near Spogi, a town along the main road running towards Daugavpils on the Daugava. The NATO troops did well. Each of the three battalion-sized battlegroups fought together despite the mixture of men within them from the variety of countries which had contributed. British and German tankers covered themselves in glory in individual fights with the mass of Russian tanks coming at them. Croat, Czech and Dutch infantry gave it everything that they had. Danish scouts and Slovenian anti-tank teams tried to keep the fight cohesive. Canadian and Romanian light troops held open the rear ready for the brigade to conduct a fighting withdrawal. The numbers weren’t on NATO’s side though. Russian artillery – firing from afar but also soon enough close-in – silenced their guns and then turned on the NATO infantry units. Russian tanks got between the main body of opponents and the river to completely surround them. The company of Canadian infantry in the rear was caught in this and wiped out; only the Romanians managed to escape the trap. The brigade commander, an experienced British officer, screamed for outside support. Where was the air cover he was promised? Where was the ground reinforcement coming up from Poland? No answers came with communications cut by Russian jamming and shelling. All that there was instead was a relentless attack to blast them to smithereens. Three regiments from the 10th Division had won this fight and straight afterwards, another tank regiment approached the river and linked-up with those holding bridges. Over the Daugava they went and they reached the Lithuanian frontier in the late afternoon before crossing there too. More of the division was tasked to catch up – leaving the rounding up of whatever NATO soldiers were left alive to one of the regiments – as the 10th Division kept on going. They were deep inside Lithuania by the time they stopped, once it got dark, and behind Lithuanian troops fighting on the border with Belarus.

Moving into Latvia afterwards was the 4th Guards Tank Division. They were being kept back for a second fight and to be used in pincer movements further south. Their slower forward progress, moving at a leisurely pace almost, saw them reach the Daugava further downstream and around Jekabpils. Bridges were already in the hands of armoured scouts and the process of crossing them started. SAM teams were setting up to cover this as everyone waited for NATO air power to come into action. That hadn’t yet occurred. There were enemy aircraft over Latvia but they were involved in the fighting around Riga, closer to the sea. Latvia’s 1st Infantry Brigade was between that city and the Russian frontier. They fell backwards towards Riga and further and further away from the NATO Brigade. Pre-war plans had been for the two of them to fight side-by-side yet they only moved apart and were attacked all by their lonesome. Fighting the Latvian organised combat troops here were Russian paratroopers. Men from the 23rd Guards Air Assault Regiment fought with their armoured vehicles and also had assistance in moving about with assault helicopters. The Latvians didn’t stand a chance and neither did they didn’t put on a good show. Comments from NATO politicians and military briefers would later portray things differently but that wasn’t the case. Faced with what they were hit with and knowing themselves that they were doomed, the Latvians suffered massive rates of desertion while others threw up their hands in surrender. The Twentieth Guards Army had been given thirty-six hours to take Riga; they were there in under ten. NATO air activity continued when it came to a special operation west of the capital and the 23rd Regiment afterwards was heavily hit by air strikes which caused more losses than what the Latvians had done. This would delay them from their objective of rolling down into Lithuania afterwards but not stop them.

Although large areas of the country remained unoccupied by the end of the war’s first day, the fight here had been won by the Russians. Only the Courland area, next to the Baltic, was somewhere that NATO could have held. There were no troops that were available to be sent there at this time though. By tomorrow, more of those light scouting units would be taking in the sights along the coast there.


Polish fears before the conflict started, and why they wanted NATO forces aplenty on their soil (even Germans despite the historic issues), were that from out of the exclave which was Kaliningrad, Russian forces would invade Poland. An invasion of Poland was coming, though not out of Kaliningrad on the first day of the war. Instead, the mission for Russian forces in the region on August 7th was to hold firm facing Poland while assisting in the overcoming of Lithuania to the north and east. The Eleventh Army Corps did as ordered. Those two motor rifle brigades merged into an ad hoc division (the 1st Guards Motor Rifle) held the Polish frontier behind fixed defences. Exchanges of artillery fire at distance and closer rifle fire between men occurred. North-to-south or south-to-north movement didn’t occur yet though. That would be for another day. Up into Lithuania, Russian paratroopers with their 98th Guards Airborne Division struck. It was these men, in conjunction with the brigade of naval infantry now off in distant Copenhagen, which the Poles had feared would make an assault deep into Poland with those heavy ground troops. The Lithuanians were the target for the opening Russian attack though. The 98th Division was all over them, hitting them from behind when Lithuania had its lone heavy combat force, the Iron Wolf Brigade, fighting the Belorussians. BMD infantry fighting vehicles, aided by self-propelled mortars & anti-tank guns (2S31 Venas and 2S25 Spruts), moved forward along with men in trucks; there were no air drops and only a few helicopter movements. Klaipeda on the Baltic fell to the advance of one regiment; a second marched on Kaunas. One further Russian regiment, and the one with most of the available armour, entered the southernmost reached of Lithuania. They were on the Lithuanian side of the Suwalki Gap. NATO had its men involved in fighting on the Polish side. The Russians had an easy time going forward and completed a clockwise turning manoeuvre as they went onwards aiming for a link up with the Belorussians. Where they faced opposition was from the skies. Firstly, RAF Tornados, who should have been aiding the Baltic Brigade, bombed them from above and then Belorussian Su-25s hit them. The latter was a ‘friendly fire’ incident though with nothing friendly about it. One of the pilots from those Su-25s who misidentified the Russians as Poles ejected when his aircraft was shot down and was then killed by his enraged captors despite his nationality. This ugly incident aside, link-up was made on the ground between ‘allies’. The way was shut into Lithuania should NATO have tried to force it open here… something impossible due to events elsewhere.

Belorussia’s Fifth Assault Corps conducted the attack into western Lithuania. Three combat brigades – the 19th Reserve Tank, the 103rd Guards Mobile (an airmobile unit) and the 120th Guards Mechanised – conducted this with strong support from recon, artillery and engineering units. The Lithuanian capital Vilnius was struck on the right with the link-up with Russian allies striking out of Kaliningrad made on the left. The Iron Wolf Brigade tried to stop the Belorussians from getting into their capital and did a good job. For most of the war’s first day, if it had been just this fight all in a vacuum, Lithuania won. A poor show was put on by both the 19th & 120th Brigades where they went into Lithuania behind all of that opening massed artillery and with good air cover above them. The Lithuanians ran rings around them in quite the embarrassment. Russian officers attached to the command staffs were aghast at the performance; naturally, they would have done things differently and done it well… or so they assured themselves However, once the Russians entered Lithuania from out of Latvia and also Kaunas fell, Vilnius and its defenders were doomed. The Lithuanians had knocked out all of those tanks with missiles, moved down infantry with well-sited machine guns & heavy mortars and also rode out the artillery barrages but were now being approached from the rear. They couldn’t withdraw north nor south nor east nor west. They fell back closer to the city instead. Ground defended from the Belorussians so well was now given up. Vilnius would be fought over another day but it was there where the last of the country’s resistance would be. As to the 103rd Brigade, that Belorussian unit had an easier time. They met those Russian paratroopers ahead of schedule and after facing weak opposition on the way. Russian anger over supposedly friendly aircraft bombing them was shrugged off in this victory that they had confidently won.


Poland was invaded from elsewhere rather than Kaliningrad.

Russia’s newly-named First Guards Tank Army (the former Twenty–Second Army received an historic name as a propaganda move) was in Belarus pre-war. It included Belorussian units among its many Russian forces. The field army was bigger than the one which had been present in East Germany at the end of the Cold War and far more-capable too. Orders for the multinational elements of the US V Corps coming from SACEUR through CJTF-East had been for those forces near to the Belorussian border to pull back once war erupted. Both the American’s own 3rd Infantry Division and 172nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team did so; behind them, the Polish 16th Armoured Cavalry Division also in north-eastern Poland did just that too. They withdrew ready to fight better when concentrated and to be joined by reinforcements which would pour into Eastern Europe soon enough. Neither the German 1st Airmobile Brigade nor the Polish 1st Mechanised Division did the same. The Germans didn’t get the order to withdraw and the Polish general refused to do so. Up in the Polish side of the Suwalki Gap, American and Polish troops there separate from the US V Corps, were instructed to fight it out and withdraw when they needed to.

Russian heavy forces with their 2nd ‘Taman’ Guards Motor Rifle and 5th Guards Tank Divisions, assisted by two Belorussian mechanised brigades, entered Poland side-by-side. They fought through Polish border troops left in-place all on their own and under air cover plus heavy artillery support. The Taman Guards moved towards Bialystok. This small Polish city was at a crossroads and thus a key communications centre. Occupying the town directly when taken would be a task for the Belorussians and it was somewhere not desired to be fought over. The Russians hoped to see American troops engaged near it and destroyed before Bialystok fell into their laps: it would be a prise to be traded away in peace talks. The 170th Brigade escaped from the Russians though, pulling back and away fast. Russian aircraft tried to stop them with bomb attacks yet flights of Su-27s trying to protect Su-24s lower down were feasted upon by F-22s firing from distance. NATO’s rear airbases had been hit and hit hard, but they still had some operational with aircraft flying from them. The American ground forces got away. The Taman Guards failed to achieve their goal. They had a large area of Polish territory occupied and the Belorussians moved on Bialystok with their 6th Guards Mechanised Brigade – where they would have to fight for it – yet that didn’t matter for nought. However, they’d face a different second day in Poland. In the meantime, the 5th Division met the Poles in battle where they clashed with their 1st Division. The utterly stupid and vain attempt to charge head-on into battle by the divisional command cost thousands of Polish casualties in terms of deaths, injuries and prisoners taken. His deputy had him removed from command and pulled back the shattered division in the afternoon and back down the road to the distant Warsaw. This left the city of Biala Podlaska uncovered; somewhere similar in terms of size and importance to Bialystok. Again, Belorussian troops (from their 37th Guards Mechanised Brigade) approached a Polish populated area to meet defensive fire from irregulars and lighter troops. The 5th Division couldn’t follow the mass of retreating other Poles though when waves of aircraft showed up in the skies. All sorts of NATO jets made appearances. Some were hit in the skies from Russian fighters and others eliminated by SAMs fired from missile-launchers rolling forward with the leading ground units; others got through though. There were too many Russians to finish off but they could bring them to a stop. This occurred with the 5th Division halted a third of the way between the Belorussian border and Warsaw. Polish minds were at once focused on the threat to their capital over and above anything else.

That German brigade (the Bundeswehr had two brigades of paratroopers as well; one held back at home and the other in Afghanistan) had a terrible day. They were engaged by Belorussian airmobile men with the 38th Guards Mobile Brigade. This fight occurred along the banks of the River Bug between where the two Russian heavy divisions were operating. The First Guards Tank Army’s HQ hadn’t expected much of the Belorussians in this fight: they were left pleasantly surprised. The Germans, waiting on orders, were caught by a foe who attacked from multiple directions and used light armoured plus armed helicopter support. They returned fire while waiting desperately for external support. None came, just more Belorussian attacks and then they came under fire from distant Russian missile units given them as a target of opportunity. It was a slaughter. That slaughter in combat was joined after the fighting was over too. German soldiers surrendered and many were killed by Belorussians in acts of cold-blooded murder. Hyped-up by propaganda of historical grievances, the result of that was that the 38th Brigade was responsible for the slaying of dozens of bound prisoners. Orders from above were for such men – especially POWs from America and Western Europe – to be treated well and used for later political purposes; the Belorussians didn’t obey them.

On the map, the Suwalki Gap looked like something more than it was. It was a corridor for access from Poland into the Baltic States – and the other way too – and the terrain was reasonably good. It wasn’t perfect for armoured warfare though. That argument could be used for famous military regions like the Fulda Gap or the Hof Throat from the Cold War era too but the Suwalki Gap wasn’t like the Karbala Gap which had been found in Iraq and exploited there in 2003. There was much woodland in this part of Poland and the transport links weren’t that great despite the main road running north-south. Moreover, as said, that road ran north-south. Those assigned to attack it moved east-west plus had several lakes plus some marshland between them and the road in the centre of the region. Behind those natural defences were the American’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment joined by the Polish 6th Airborne Brigade and 18th Reconnaissance Regiment; coming at them were the Russians with their 3rd Motor Rifle Division and the 11th Guards Mechanised Brigade from Belarus. A huge fight commenced which took place without break throughout the day and into the night. Countless engagements occurred where everything was thrown at winning by each and in many places at several times proper command-&-control was lost. In such a battle, that was impossible to maintain. No winner emerged by the end of the day. Each side had taken huge losses yet failed to overcome the other. Training and preparation for war for all involved hadn’t prepared them for this! Military equipment was smashed apart like toys destroyed by an enraged unruly child. The Russians & Belorussians hadn’t taken the region. The Americans and Poles hadn’t kept them out of all of it though. All that had occurred was that there were many, many dead here. This included civilians too who lived among this sudden battlefield of unheralded violence. Fighting would continue through the darkness and into tomorrow. The killing went on.

Fifty-Five

The Royal Danish Army had less than forty Leopard-2 tanks in its entire inventory. Conversely, the Russian 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade alone had more than seventy T-80s. Other, lighter kinds of armoured vehicles were plenty on both sides, and anti-tank missiles streaked across the city of Copenhagen. The Danes had lost almost half of their tanks by the early evening of August 7th, and across the island, Russian Marines were advancing with vigour.

The smaller landing force that had disembarked at Koge, consisting of the 877th Naval Infantry Battalion amongst other support units, pushed northeast amongst scattered opposition on the ground, with the 1st Armoured Infantry Battalion, the main force that would have opposed them, destroyed earlier in the day by thermobaric weapons. The Russians faced repeated attacks from the air, however. German Tornado’s, Danish F-16s, and US Air Force A-10s all made repeated bombing runs, slowing the Russian advance but not without casualties. Countless sorties were flown from bases further south in Germany. The skies were rarely clear of NATO warplanes, and although many losses were incurred by Allied pilots, control of the skies over Zealand and the Baltic Approaches was wrestled out of the hands of the Russian Air Force and Naval Aviation within hours of the initial landings around Copenhagen. Surface-to-air missiles continued to pluck NATO jets out of the sky, but American, German, Danish and British aircraft were able to mount a consistent flow of raids against Russian units disembarking at Copenhagen and Koge, dramatically slowing the advance of Russian forces. Efforts at aerial interdiction only increased throughout the day, causing heavier and heavier casualties amongst Russian units.

The plan, which was now falling apart, was for the 877th Battalion to link up with the main landing force somewhere around the township of Roskilde.

NATO operations to reinforce Denmark were under way already. The British Army’s 16th Air Assault Brigade, a formation with nearly ten thousand men under its control, had been waiting to deploy to Latvia at the outbreak of fighting. With the situation in Latvia fast becoming hopeless, the decision was made by NATO’s still-confused commanders not to send the British paratroopers into the Baltic States, where they would likely be annihilated in a piecemeal fashion. Rather, the British airborne brigade was to deploy to Zealand to assist the Danes in fighting off the invaders.

Royal Air Force C-130s took off from RAF Brize Norton, loaded with men from the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment. By four in the afternoon, these men were descending onto Zealand.

2nd Battalion – 2 PARA – landed safely north of Copenhagen, with its landing site having already been secured by members of the Pathfinder Platoon. They moved into Copenhagen itself on foot, joining the Royal Danish Army’s 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion in urban fighting as the day drew to a close. The Paras took up defensive positions in the northern district of the city, aiming to block a Russian breakout effort and prevent the linking up of the two landing sites. The battalion rapidly found itself engaged in heavy fighting alongside the Danes throughout the evening. The Paras clashed with Russian Marines, and yet more of Copenhagen was raised to the ground in the fighting. Having brought with them a large amount of American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, the British troops were able to score numerous hits on the T-80s of the 336th Brigade, but not enough to prevent Russian forces from pushing westwards into the Rodovre District.

To be an infantryman fighting against armoured or mechanised forces was never a desirable position to be in, but the urban nature of Copenhagen played to the advantage of the defenders, allowing for infantrymen to hide inside shattered buildings or behind piles of rubble and engage their better-armed opponents before moving rapidly to new defensive positions, bleeding the Russian Marines dry before they could make any significant headway. The Danes held on in the north, pushing back repeated attempts to break out of the city itself and up the northern coast of Zealand, albeit taking murderous losses as they fought. Su-24s again targeted their positions, this time using conventional bombs, with Danish air defences knocking down four of their number. The men of 2 PARA held onto highway junctions in Rodovre, taking heavier and heavier casualties under fire from BTR-80s which moved with the Russian Marines. The battalion of self-propelled 2S1 howitzers launched barrage after barrage of 122mm artillery fire against the northern and western defensive lines within Copenhagen, causing massive loss of life. Bodies of soldiers, British, Danish, and Russian, as well as civilians, littered the streets.

The sky was thick with ash and smoke as flames roared through the city.

3 PARA found itself in an even worse situation. Six hundred men descended from the afternoon sky, landing in the farmlands around the as yet uncontested town of Havdrup. As they landed, men of the 877th Battalion were advancing past the town, and quickly moved to defensive positions. The whole battalion of British paratroopers was pinned down under heavy machinegun and mortar fire immediately upon its landing, with dozens men being killed by enemy troops firing downwards from an elevated position. This one-sided battle lasted for nearly twenty minutes. Every time British troops attempted to move, they were cut down by accurate enemy fire. Repeated attempts to silence the enemy guns were a failure, with neither the British nor the Danes having much artillery that could be brought to bear. This would only change when Harrier GR.9 jump jets flying from HMS Illustrious, positioned in the North Sea, flew in low over the horizon and hit the Russian positions with rockets and then again with laser-guided bombs. The Para’s then counterattacked, running in broad daylight across open ground towards Russian positions which had them pinned down. More casualties were sustained as the British soldiers closed with the Russians, engaging them in hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and rifle butts. High-explosive and white phosphorus grenades were thrown, burning men alive in their trenches. The British charge was one of sheer desperation, and 3 PARA’s commanding officer would later admit he never thought it would work.

Nevertheless, rocked back on their heels by the ferocity of the fighting, a battle which they were not prepared for, the 877th Battalion engaged in a tactical withdrawal, pulling back southwards under the cover of artillery fire. Though nearly a quarter of 3 PARA had become casualties in the surprise battle, the Russians had been pushed back closer to their landing site in what was a major victory for NATO forces on Zealand; there could be no link up between the two landing forces until the main landing force could push through the blood-soaked streets of Copenhagen.

The rest of 16th Air Assault Brigade was rapidly airlifted into airfields on the northern side of the island. Men from the 1st and 2nd Battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment were the first to disembark, joining 2 PARA in the western suburbs of Copenhagen. Similarly, 1st Battalion, Royal Ghurkha Rifles, was transported by helicopter to join the Danish 2nd Armoured Infantry Battalion, desperately holding out along the eastern coast of the island. Supporting them was light armour from the Household Cavalry Regiment. Troops and 105mm guns from the 7th Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, were also flown onto Zealand. The effort to airlift to these 8,000 soldiers as well as their heavy equipment to Zealand was herculean in nature, involving not only Royal Air Force C-130s but also civilian airliners belonging to British Airways and other airlines taken under government control during the final days of peace. The Royal Air Force possessed only a small number of larger American-made C-17 transport aircraft, and those few big, vulnerable jets were used to transport the FV107 Scimitar fighting vehicles of the Household Cavalry Regiment, dramatically boosting the firepower of 16th Air Assault Brigade and putting them in a better position to take on Russian armour.

Despite the casualties suffered by 3 PARA, and to a lesser extent 2 PARA, plans to push Russian forces off of Zealand would soon be put into effect.

*

The Russian Baltic Fleet moved to reinforce the 336th Naval Infantry Brigade by sea. This was to be done by using a combination of airpower and naval vessels to eliminate the NATO presence in the Baltic, thus allowing the Russian Navy to transport more troops from St Petersburg and land them at Koge and Copenhagen. On paper, this reinforcement could be done and it would allow for the Russians to launch a giant pincer movement, pinning Danish troops to the coast in between the two landing sites. Unfortunately for Russia, the GRU had greatly overestimated just how long it would take for NATO ground forces to reach Zealand and strengthen the battered Royal Danish Army brigade stationed on the island.

The naval Battle of the Baltic Exits began in the afternoon on August 7th, less than twenty-four hours into World War III. A pair of United States Navy submarines had already moved to position themselves just off of Gothenburg, Sweden, to prevent any Russian vessels moving out through those narrow straits and into the North Sea where they could threaten southern Norway, or perhaps even England or Germany. With British paratroopers and airmobile infantry now moving to support the Danes, the initial worries that Zealand was soon to be lost were quelled, but the situation there was nonetheless precarious. If the Russian Baltic Fleet could move more personnel there then the situation would be reversed once again and there were few ground units that NATO could send to the island to prevent its loss.

The NATO Surface Action Group in the Baltic Sea moved from the south, from its positions along the Baltic coast of Poland, to engage Russian warships and transports moving troops to Copenhagen. Those NATO vessels had been in position to repel an amphibious assault on Gdansk, with the idea of a direct attack on Zealand being seen as outside of Russia’s capabilities. NATO aircraft were engaging the Russians out over the Baltic Sea and over the front in Poland, and there were few submarines that would be able to operate in the Baltic; this would be an old-school ship-on-ship fight more reminiscent of the First World War than anything modern, despite the use of radars and high-tech missiles. There were five Russian destroyers and frigates protecting the amphibious vessels from which a second wave of ground troops would disembark at Koge and Copenhagen. Two Sovremenny-class destroyers, packed with firepower, defended the landing ships, along with a pair of Neustrashimyy-class frigates and an older Krivak-class frigate. NATO warplanes from Germany and Denmark had already engaged the amphibious ships early in the morning and had successfully sunk an LCAC and one of the Ropuchas. This wouldn’t be enough to prevent another wave of troops from landing though.

The German frigate Bayern was, much to the displeasure of the US Navy task force commander, the first NATO vessel to score a hit on a Russian ship. The captain of the Bayern was able to attain a firing solution on the Pyliky, the old Russian Krivak-class frigate which protected the amphibious forces on their south-eastern flank. Bayern launched a pair of Exocet missiles, French-made weapons that were outdated compared to the Harpoons carried by other NATO ships, one of which missed the Pyliky but the other of which scored a direct hit. With less modern damage control systems than the other Russian ships, the Russian frigate went down fast.

The Sovremennys, however, were what NATO sailors really feared. They were very modern warships packed with every anti-ship weapon one could conceive. One Russian destroyer, Nastoychivyy, engaged the Allied vessels with what NATO called SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship missiles. Two Sunburns hit HMS Kent, one of two Royal Navy vessels in the Baltic Sea. Kent, unlike the Pyliky, was a fairly modern ship and her crew were well-drilled in damage control. Nevertheless, this would not be enough to save the Royal Navy frigate. However, much of her crew was able to safely evacuate the ship due to their training, and when she sank, over seventy percent of her crew, almost two-hundred strong, escaped to tell the tale.

Nastoychivyy was the next ship to end up down in Davy Jones Locker’. She was hit by numerous Harpoons fired from the USS Kidd. It took less than half-an-hour for the Russian destroyer to sink, taking half of her once-victorious crew down with her. Meanwhile, the other Sovremenny assigned to the Russian Baltic Fleet returned fire on NATO shipping to the south-east. The destroyer Bespokoynyy and the Neustrashimyy-type warship Yaroslav Mudryy launched their own anti-ship missiles back at the USS Kidd and also at the Polish frigate ORP Generał Kazimierz Pułaski. Kidd was able to ‘splash’ those incoming ‘Vampires’ with her air defence systems, firstly knocking several of them down with Sm-2 anti-aircraft missiles and then killing another with her Phalanx Close in Weapons System (CIWS). The Polish frigate was not so lucky; a pair of Sunburn missiles slammed into the ship. The first detonated on her helicopter landing pad at the rear of the ship; the second buried itself within her hull before exploding, igniting the ships magazine in a thunderous explosion which utterly destroyed the former US Navy Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate, taking most of her crew down with her.

In turn, Kidd as well as HMS Montrose, a Type-23 frigate just like the now-sunken Kent, launched their Harpoon missiles back at the trio of surviving Russian ships. A big volley of Harpoons was fired, some never making it to their targets but others doing so with devastating effect. Bespokoynyy was damaged with a Harpoon hit from Montrose, leaving her rudderless and dead in the water, easy prey for the two more AGM-184s which struck the destroyer after being launched from USS Kidd. She went down just like so many other ships already had. Next it was Neustrashimyy, the namesake of her class. The Bayern scored her second victory of the day when an Exocet launched from the German frigate sank Neustrashimyy. She was finished off by a second missile hit, this one a Harpoon, from HMS Montrose.

Yaroslav Mudryy turned to flee. She was able to launch another anti-ship missile at the Kidd as she withdrew. That missile was blown out of the sky by a US Navy Sm-2. The fleeing Russian frigate was now at the mercy of four NATO warships, and they had no intention of letting her escape; three Harpoons would strike the hapless Yaroslav Mudryy, sending her and most of her crew to a watery grave at the bottom of the dark Baltic Sea. Flames from burning oil slicks danced on the horizon as the Battle of the Baltic Exits came to an end with a resounding NATO victory.




Fifty–Six

Ahead of the opening of their war, the Russian leadership had pointedly not made many of their allies – real allies and ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ allies – aware of what they had planning to do. China was one of the best informed and even they knew extremely little. The fear was that by talking to others, then they would talk among themselves and let the cat out of the bag. Countries such as Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela for example weren’t informed ahead of the war launched. It was anticipated that several, if not all of them (maybe not Libya to be fair) would recognise the opportunity given them with America and its Western allies under attack and therefore jump into the war. Why would they not? Outside of the borders of the former Soviet Union, close allies of Moscow were informed ahead of time that war was coming. Belarus was fully committed and Russia also made sure it had Armenia, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine on-side. Yet, no formation active participation was sought from either in the war’s opening stages. This was especially important with the Ukraine. Kiev was told late, very late indeed, and Moscow did so because it didn’t want Ukraine in the war at this stage, if at all. On paper, Ukraine would appear to offer much but the reality was different. Russia feared national stability in the country as well as rating the state of their military poorly. There was something to be had with having a friendly neutral in the form of the Ukraine too. NATO would have to be prepared to face down a possible Ukrainian attack – as they already were by how they had committed elements of their military pre-war to guard against that – and would have to keep many of those in-place when fighting Russia in case the Ukrainians did attack. In south-eastern Poland, through Slovakia & Hungary and into Romania there were NATO forces from across their alliance. Some of those would depart to fight up in Poland, yes, but not many. The Kremlin sought to keep as many as they could out of that fight too by giving them a fight to have where the idea that the Ukraine could join that looked likely. This concerned another ally within the borders of the former USSR: the unrecognised, breakaway state of Transnistria (sometimes known as Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic).

Aided by a regiment of Russian paratroopers in-country, Transnistria’s small army attacked Moldova. Moldova wasn’t a NATO member but its immediate neighbour Romania to the west was. This attack was focused on moving westwards too. Romania had its army mobilised ahead of the war with the belief that a Kremlin-supporting Ukraine would invade. Bulgaria had sent troops to Romania and there was a brigade of multinational troops from several NATO countries – a force smaller than the one in Latvia – also present. Note had been taken of Russia sending men to Transnistria and also the presence of Russian fighters in-country too. This was what Romania had feared and now it came true. Moldova was caught in the middle of this where Romania was the true goal of Russian activity here with Transnistria browbeaten, bullied even, into involvement all with the greasy promise of big prizes when it was over. That attack into Moldova started good enough but it was never going to be enough to overrun the country. As Transnistria was, Moldova too was a heavily-militarised state. The Moldovans fought back. The stage had been set for a bigger conflict here where there was a wait for it all to expand. Inside Romania, an attack was made at the military facility of Câmpia Turzii – the Romanian Air Force’s 71st Air Base – when a Spetsnaz detachment struck here. Their planned action was to take place at the outbreak of war in coordination with those made elsewhere yet a delay, one not their fault it must be said, took place. The mission was still given the green-light by the detachment commander as hitting the facility deep in the heart of historic Transylvania was important: Romanian MiG-21s (old but good aircraft and upgraded well enough) flew from here on a regular basis and they had been joined by some NATO reconnaissance assets. The delay meant that the attack was made late and against an alerted opponent. Furthermore, Romanian special forces were present along with US Green Berets where both were planning to use the airbase as an airhead for operations against a possible Ukrainian invasion, and this was a presence unknown to those who struck here. Russian commandos met these men in battle and came off worse from the fight with many of their number cut down and the rest scattered where they faced a tough time afterwards on the run.

Russia operated military facilities on Ukrainian soil. These were bases in the Crimea with the naval anchorage at Sevastopol and a naval airfield there too. Ukrainian neutrality didn’t mean that these, where they supported Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, wouldn’t be used in wartime. Russia intended to do so. The Black Sea would be a Russian lake with complete dominance sought over it. Turkey’s pre-war sudden break with its NATO allies greatly aided this. The Turkish Straits were shut to military shipping due to the ‘emergency’ in light of the failed coup d’état. Russia’s interests were hampered a bit by this as they would be unable to get their ships out but, in all honesty, it wasn’t likely that they would have done had Turkey kept that waterway open. The result of Turkish action was that what NATO naval presence there was in the Black Sea was now cut off. The navies of Bulgaria and Romania had warships at sea and they had been joined by a few vessels from the French Navy and the US Navy. The Black Sea Fleet went after those ships at the outbreak of war. Russian ships and aircraft did so with gusto. They wanted the prize of taking down ships such as the American destroyer USS Ross and also the FNS Courbet, a French frigate. The former carried Tomahawks which could – and probably would – be fired against Sevastopol or even Russia itself while the latter had, at the end of July, conducted aggressive actions (in Russia’s eyes) against the Black Sea Fleet. In the past week, both of them had withdrawn away to the southwest and near to Bulgaria but the Russians kept their attention on them ready to put each on the bottom of the sea floor. When H-Hour arrived, the Black Sea Fleet went after NATO ships with those two at the top of their list of targets. Both were hit on the war’s first day. An aircraft firing several missiles from distance set the Courbet ablaze from bow-to-stern leading to her eventual abandonment and sinking. With the Ross, the destroyer was torpedoed by a stalking submarine. Its attacker got one hit and moved in for a second, and killer, strike. However, a counterattack with the Ross’ helicopter dropping torpedoes as well as aid from the Romanian Navy drove off that Russian submarine. The good news with that came alongside the bad with ten sailors dead and three more left missing. Ross remained afloat but under tow. Spotted heading towards it, over the horizon, were up to a dozen Russian surface combatants with frigates, destroyers and cruisers among them. Urgent signals were sent from the destroyer asking for orders from Sixth Fleet’s command post, a headquarters in the process of relocating to Croatia from Naples when war came. With so much happening elsewhere, there was a delay in response. When that did come, orders were issued for Ross to use her Tomahawks while the ship’s captain was informed too that unfortunately no help was available at this time. Fire your missiles and do your best was what the captain was in effect told. He did just that with launches made of twenty-nine of the thirty cruise missiles aboard (the last one just wouldn’t fire despite everything tried to get it to fly) against far off targets. Those missiles flew towards the Crimea and mainland Russia with a wide array of impact sites selected for them. As to the Black Sea Fleet, they were due to arrive by the next morning. The Ross, joined at sea by the Bulgarians & Romanians, would have her ultimate fate decided then and not on its terms.

Serbia wasn’t a country which could recently be considered to be a Russian ally. Historic relations between Belgrade and Moscow had been good overall though fraught with periods of tension over certain years. In the summer of 2010, Serbia wasn’t about to go to the war with the West at Russia’s behest. Within moments of the war starting however, Russia tried to get Serbia to do so. An offer of ‘full support’ was made to support a ‘rightful re-taking of Kosovo’. What that full support meant wasn’t expanded upon. Though unsaid, it was clear that the expectation to would be that Serbia would as well act against NATO countries. Serbia was surrounded by those and in Belgrade, they realised that they’d end up fighting all of them. Furthermore, should it retake Kosovo, which many in Serbia did see as ‘rightfully’ theirs, Serbia would too be at war with Western Europe, Canada and, of course, the United States as well. News came fast from the latter where the ambassador in Washington informed his government that Obama was dead. The American president had been killed in a Russian assassination. This, more than anything else, was the key matter in the decision in Belgrade to send a polite ‘no thank you’ to Moscow. The ambassador had stated the obvious: America’s rage was going to be worse than 9/11 and Serbia didn’t want to be in the way of that. Only a fool would put themselves in a position to join this war voluntarily. In a telling further remark, that same diplomat speculated that there would be few other countries who would decide to join Russia’s war on this basis too. The Kremlin might think differently but they were free to do what they thought best. Serbia would do what it considered to be the right course of action and stay out of this conflict.

Further south, the US Navy had the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis at sea in the eastern Med. Along with its battle group, the carrier was in the Aegean Sea west of access to the Turkish Straits. Airspace of both Greece and Turkey were closed to ‘foreign military aircraft’ at the outbreak of war. This aided the Americans in making sure that the Russians couldn’t come at them with aircraft laden with missiles but restricted their own capabilities too. The Stennis was full of jets and there was a war on but they had no one to fly against. From Split where Admiral Harris (US Sixth Fleet’s commander) had transferred to, he requested from SACEUR permission for his aircraft to fly above Greece and then over Bulgaria to take part in Black Sea naval operations. This was refused. Stavridis – still aboard his aircraft and a long way from the gunfire at SHAPE – was following his pre-war political instructions on this where the neutrality of Greece and Turkey was something that NATO had agreed to overcome through diplomatic means. Neither country had turned on NATO directly but it was feared that they would if they believed themselves under threat with their airspace infringed. Harris and those below him could do nothing to change this for now. It was all politics and all over their heads. Therefore, the Stennis spent the first day of the war doing nothing. Patrols were made from its aircraft and missions planned for ‘when’ airspace was opened up but before then, the extraordinary offensive capability of this vessel by means of its air wing was let impotent when it could have done so much.