Soviet specialists with the ANC before leaving for the Umkhonto we Sizwe training camp “Kakulama”: military intelligence specialist Nikolai Ivanovich Pirch, specialist in materiel and combat use of small arms Igor Mikhailovich Sheptun, specialist in fire training Kalizhan Kuanyshbaevich Alzhanov, military translators Vitaly Dmitrievich Svetlyshev…Read More

Inspection at the Tobias Haineko Training Center. To the right of SWAPO Defense Minister Peter Nanyemba is the senior of the first group of Soviet military specialists at SWAPO in Angola, Colonel Yuri Sergeevich Zaputryaev, and translator Mikhail Petrovich Suknov. On the far left in the photo is Lieutenant Alexander Sergeevich Kuryanov. 1977.…Read More

Advisor to the PLAN commander in 1979–1983, Colonel Nikolai Vasilyevich Kurushkin, greets fighters from one of the African NODs, Angola, 1980s. Photo from N. Kurushkin’s archive.

A firearms training session at the Jumbo training center shooting range. In the center is military interpreter Lieutenant Ferid Munirovich Zulkarneev. Soviet specialists at the training center often assigned trained interpreters to conduct some of the training themselves. Among the SWAPO fighters, sitting on the right, is adviser Lieutenant…Read More

At the Tobias Haineko Training Center. In the center is Colonel Ivan Grigorievich Zherlitsyn, on the right is PLAN leadership member Comrade Ushona, Lubango, 1979. Photo from the archive of I. Zherlitsyn.

The wreckage of the fuselage of the South African Air Force Impala attack aircraft, shot down by PLAN air defense fighters in southern Angola, was transported to the T. Haineko Training Center. In the center is Colonel V. A. Skurydin, Advisor to the Chief Military Prosecutor of PLAN. 1985. Photo from the archive of A. Marchenko.

Before being sent to the front. Ceremonial formation of the PLAN brigade trained at the Tobias Haineko Training Center. Lubango region, 1979. Photo from the archive of I. Zherlitsyn.

Cuban tank crew in Angola.

Soviet special forces (Spetsnaz) in Angola, 1985.

A Soviet military specialist trains Angolan communists in hand-to-hand combat techniques. War in Angola, the 1970s

Soviet advisor Tatyana Davydova poses with an Angolan soldier in Angola, late 1980’s.

A front-line ‘homemade’ product created by the Cubans for convoy escort