40th Army (Soviet Union) - Second Formation (OKSVA)

Second Formation (OKSVA)

The Army was re-created on December 16, 1979 in the Turkestan Military District on the directive of the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces. The commanding officer of the army was appointed Lieutenant General Yu.Tukharinov who was the first deputy CO of the Turkestan MD. To cover the boundary with unstable Afghanistan three motor rifle divisions (the 5th Guards, 108th and 68th) were pulled to the region. From December 3–16, 1979 two battalions of the 345th Separate Guard Parachutist Regiment and the special operation GRU unit (Muslim battalion) was deployed to the airport in Bagram (Afghanistan) as the situation in the Middle-Asian country had intensified.

On December 8, 1979 a meeting between Brezhnev, Andropov, Suslov, and Gromyko took place to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. In a couple of days the minister of defense General Dmitriy Ustinov communicated to the Chief of the General Staff N.Ogarkov that the Politburo adopted a decision on the temporary introduction of troops in the country and ordered to prepare somewhere around 75,000-80,000 concentration of force. Ustinov issued an oral order "No. 312/12/00133" on creation of a new general purpose army in TurkVO. Only on December 12, 1979 the Politburo has officially adopted the decision on the introduction of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. Next day an operative group of the Ministry of Defense was formed lead by the deputy Chief of the General Staff General S. Akhromeyev, later replaced by the Marshall of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov. On December 14 at 22:00 the operative group arrived to Termez, Tajik SSR, the same day the special KGB group "Grom" arrived to Kabul to reinforce another group "Zenit-2".

The field headquarters of the army was deployed in the Turkestan MD, while its aviation support by the 34th mixed aviation corps in the Central Asia Military District. On December 24, 1979 Minister of Defense Ustinov officially announced about the adopted decision to invade Afghanistan and signed the directive #312/12/001. Next day there were deployed around 100 different units. Out of the reserves were drafted additional 50,000 people from the Middle Asia republics and the Kazakh SSR, some 8,000 units of automobiles were transferred out of the public sector.