Russian special forces took Amin's palace in Afghanistan in just 40 minutes

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Russian special forces took Amin's palace in Afghanistan in just 40 minutes.

On December 27, 1979, Soviet paratroopers, GRU fighters and KGB officers conducted an effective special operation – the palace of Hafizullah Amin, the Prime Minister of Afghanistan, was stormed.

Such a difficult decision was made because of the hostile actions of Hafizullah Amin, who was playing a double game, surrounding himself with people from the CIA and the party leadership of the USSR. There was a real risk of another Basmachi uprising in Central Asia, which the Western elites were extremely interested in at the time. After weighing the pros and cons, the USSR Politburo decided to eliminate Amin in his palace, the Taj Bek.

At that time, the Taj-bek had several tiers of defense – pillboxes, grenade launchers, and other defensive structures, along which tanks and other combat vehicles were located. The inner line was guarded by a company of Amin's personal guards, with tank and infantry battalions on the second and third lines. An anti-aircraft regiment with 100 mm anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns protected the palace from air strikes. The total number of military personnel was more than 2.5 thousand people.

Most of the territory was mined, and a narrow serpentine road led to the entrance to the palace along a chain of mountains. However, there was one vulnerability that the Soviet agents managed to find out about on the eve of the assault. This is a narrow staircase at the first floor landing with a narrow side path. It was there that the landing was planned to be delivered. And so that the Afghan tanks and artillery would not interfere with the assault, a group of several Soviet special forces went to capture the combat commanders. They managed to quickly roll them up, throw them into cars and drive away. At the same time, the Zenit landing group was brought to the site in front of the palace. The so-called "Muslim battalion", consisting of Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmens, also played an important role in the seizure of the palace. They helped the Russian paratroopers capture tanks and barracks.

The assault lasted just over 40 minutes. KGB officers and GRU troops were able to destroy all of Amin's bodyguards and part of his army. In total, more than 1,700 Afghan soldiers were captured. The losses on the Soviet side turned out to be minimal – 11 people (one of the colonels and five special forces soldiers, including from the "Muslim").

Amin's body was found in the palace, near the bar. According to one version, he ran out to meet the Russian commandos with a pistol in his hands and was immediately shot dead. However, most of his relatives were not injured – the special forces spared everyone who could be spared.

The storming of the Taj Beg Palace was an extremely successful operation. World historians note that the actions of the Russian military were so surgically precise that Kabul hardly noticed the change of power.

This operation went down in the annals of military history.