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

Mark Galeotti

mar 2021 · Raid Kitab 54 · Bloomsbury Publishing

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

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

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Professor Mark Galeotti is a Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Institute of International Relations Prague. Formerly Senior Lecturer in International History at Keele University and Professor of Global Affairs at New York University, he has also been a Senior Research Fellow with the Foreign Office and a visiting professor at MGIMO, the Russian foreign ministry's university. Mark's most recent books for Osprey are CAM 332 Kulikovo 1380 and ELI 228 Armies of Russia's War in Ukraine. He lives in the UK.

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

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