Courtesy The UNZ Review

One of the most flawlessly executed special forces operations of the last half-century took place in 1979 when Soviet commandos stormed Afghanistan’s heavily defended presidential palace, killing Hafizullah Amin and several of his top aides. This allowed Moscow to install a replacement government much more congenial to its interests, though the result was the long Afghanistan war against Muslim guerillas.

Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, elderly and decrepit and not long for this world, must have felt tremendous pride at that successful action, as did his equally superannuated Politburo colleagues. I’m sure they all believed it demonstrated that the Soviet Union and its powerful military were still just as robust and vigorous as all their propagandistic Pravda editorials always proclaimed.

But despite that momentary military success, the Soviet economy and political system continued to decay. Just a dozen years later the USSR collapsed and disintegrated, with its Russian successor state soon entering one of the worst periods in its entire national history.

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Puncturing the Propaganda-Bubble of the USSA and Its EUSSR Vassals, by Ron Unz – The Unz Review