[1] He was greatly supportive of Gusev's plans and personally flew to Angola in June 1987 to endorse Saluting October before the Angolan government and the FAPLA general staff.

[8] Thereafter, the Soviet Union transported approximately $1 billion USD worth of military hardware to Angola in a massive airlift carried out with Antonov An-24 cargo aircraft, with as many as twelve per day landing in Luanda just prior to Saluting October.

[11] American diplomat Chester Crocker described this movement of materiel as "Moscow's largest logistical effort to date in Angola", involving over a thousand Soviet military personnel.

[13] The airstrip at Mavinga was one of the few in the country that could accommodate heavy lift aircraft carrying supplies and weapons from UNITA's two major external allies, South Africa and the United States.

[14] If Mavinga fell, FALA would lose this vital logistics lifeline, and FAPLA would be able to rapidly airlift more troops and equipment into the region, in close proximity to the UNITA political and military headquarters at Jamba.

[12] Kenyan historian Gilbert Khadiagala wrote that both the Soviet and Angolan political leadership were seduced by the idea of a quick, definitive military solution, and by July 1987, had become increasingly unwilling to engage with an American initiative led by Crocker aimed at securing peace talks with UNITA.

[15] Indeed, Moroccan political scientist Zaki Laidi pointed out that Soviet hardliners had always been opposed to American diplomatic initiatives in Angola, and their enormous contribution of military aid was partly to dissuade the Angolans from ruling out a battlefield solution in favour of a "regional settlement sponsored by the United States".

[17] Previous FAPLA offensives towards Mavinga had been unsuccessful, which Soviet advisers blamed on shortages of equipment, improper reconnaissance, and failure to safeguard the rear of the units involved.

[5] Consequently, Saluting October was to integrate more heavy armour and artillery with the FAPLA infantry, and the Soviets devoted more resources to training Angolan reconnaissance troops and combat engineers.

[20] On the personal orders of Fidel Castro, Cuban combat forces - then present in large numbers in Angola to shore up FAPLA's counter-insurgency efforts - were explicitly forbidden from participating in Saluting October.

[21] However, the East German National People's Army was uninterested in contributing regular ground troops to fully replace the role of Cuban combat formations, claiming that this would not make up for FAPLA's deficiencies.

"[24] Gusev and his chief of staff, Ivan Ryabchenko, had planned Operation Saluting October based on their experiences moving similarly sized units in the Soviet Union, and had failed to take into account the logistical disadvantages and technical shortcomings of the FAPLA forces involved.

[17] To FAPLA, the experience of planning and executing an operation of such massive proportions was relatively new, but the Soviet military mission was convinced that a decade of exhaustive training on its part had created an army capable of undertaking a complex multi-divisional offensive.

[3] The Angolan brigade commanders had repeatedly expressed reservations about splitting the force and fighting on two fronts, arguing that a single assault on Mavinga would be more linear and sufficient.

[3] Crocker notes that according to Western intelligence sources, the Soviet military mission favoured a large offensive because they had assigned undue relevance to static objectives on their maps that held little tactical significance.

"[12] The United States Department of Defense was reportedly baffled by the decision to launch such a complex offensive better suited for the European theatre, concluding that "the Soviets have developed no specific doctrine to deal with the insurgency in Angola," and had little recourse other than conventional military tactics.

[27] Aside from the FAPLA regular forces, uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC), was enlisted to provide security for supply convoys.

[30] MK militants were also ordered to carry out small diversionary attacks on FALA forces north of Cuito Cuanavale to prevent them from shifting south to reinforce Mavinga.

[32] This would prove to be a fatal error, as it allowed FALA and its South African allies to compile detailed intelligence on their movements and make preparations for its own build-up to counter the offensive.

[28] These series of movements around the Lomba left the four brigades isolated and at high risk of being individually engaged and destroyed by the (otherwise severely outnumbered) South African blocking force.

[28] According to one South African military report, "with one of its four offensive brigades totally destroyed and two of the remaining three badly mauled...[FAPLA] was left with no option but to begin withdrawing in the direction of Cuito Cuanavale.

[3] Upon receiving this news, Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos summoned Gusev and the senior Cuban general officer, Gustavo Fleitas Ramirez, for an urgent conference to discuss the worsening military situation and the failure of Operation Saluting October.

[15] He criticised Gusev's decision to launch the offensive from areas "at the extreme end of the strategic line being defended by Cuba...a remote place where supplies and logistics were made very difficult.

"[15] Soviet Minister of Defence Dmitry Yazov maintained that if Cuba had agreed to support the offensive with its regular ground forces, Saluting October would have been successful.

[17] Historian William Minter found that Western and Cuban accounts both "fault Soviet strategic advice for significant errors" during Operation Saluting October.

[14] Another historian, Jonathan House, asserted that Saluting October failed due for the same reasons as Operation Second Congress: "the combination of fragile logistics, inexperienced leaders, and [South African] spoiling actions wrecked the Soviet plans.

"[36] In his work Tank Battles of the Cold War, Anthony Tucker-Jones wrote that the Soviets' "rigid doctrine and poor command and control structure of the Angolan army" were the main causes for the offensive's failure.

[26] Tucker-Jones claimed that the Soviet military mission had ignored their own counter-insurgency experiences in Afghanistan, and committed a serious blunder by assuming they could rely solely on "overwhelming numbers of armour and infantry" to crush FALA.

[11] The majority of these casualties were sustained as a result of the South African air and artillery strikes launched under the auspices of Operation Moduler, particularly during the initial approach to the Lomba River.

"[2] Per Zhdarkin's account, the Soviets began taking custody of the prisoners and transporting them to the rear in their own vehicles to prevent illegal executions by FAPLA enlisted troops.