Cold War

The Russian army entered the fight against frost

The Russian army now has a real, as opposed to a potential and probable, enemy. This is "General Frost". The capabilities of the new enemy turned out to be so great that the strategy to combat it was jointly developed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief and the Minister of Defense. After this, the head of the military department ordered the commanders of the Leningrad and Far Eastern military districts to come into contact with the leaders of the regions most affected by cold steel.

Yesterday the first information about the ongoing hostilities arrived. In the north-west of the country, the main forces were sent to defend the city of Tikhvin, where 13 thousand people were left without heat. The 6th Air Force and Air Defense Army is operating in the direction of the main attack, providing the city with a diesel power plant along with mechanics and a supply of fuel. The pressure of the aviators was supported by the engineering troops, who allocated two more power plants. Operational groups have been created in military units to help local authorities whenever possible. The district's construction department allocated five powerful mobile heat-ventilation units to Tikhvin to warm up the entrances of residential buildings. In addition, the Leningrad Military District threw 12 units of motor-tractor equipment and 50 sets of stoves for heating the premises into the breakthrough, and the personnel cleared a dozen kilometers of snow debris.

In the Far East, more than a hundred soldiers, 16 units of automotive equipment and 15 tons of fuel were sent to liberate civilians from “cold captivity,” and six peaceful power plants were repaired. A large-scale operation is not yet required, district officials say.

“Of course, helping people in need is a noble cause,” a senior officer of the Main Directorate of Educational Work of the Russian Ministry of Defense said in a conversation with a correspondent of the Vremya Novostey newspaper, “but this is not the mission of the army. There are public utilities, local authorities, but the army is again left to plug the holes.” The newspaper’s interlocutor complained that the army itself is experiencing a fuel shortage, that “the same diesel power plants were taken from reserve, and this undermines combat readiness.”

According to the officer, the transition to a new method of recruiting the army assumes that contract soldiers will only engage in combat training. Involving the army in performing functions unusual for it may revive the not best traditions of the past: soldiers will again begin to “dig potatoes, participate in the battle for the harvest, and then the construction of the general’s dachas will be legalized.”

Nikolay POROSKOV