The street fighting continues, like a hidden monster, constantly devouring fresh life every moment.

The Soviets found that it was not so easy to withdraw their troops, and now, as the climate continues to get colder, the street fighting will be more brutal, remembering that decades ago, Germany attacked the Soviet Union on a large scale, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of German troops froze to death outside Moscow, and the Soviets felt that the situation was not good.

Finally, after holding out for another half a month, the two sides stopped street fighting, and the Soviet troops withdrew from Jalalabad, at this time, their casualties had exceeded 30,000.

This is a price that is difficult for the Soviet Union to accept, the powerful Soviet Army, in the street fighting, can not defeat the Afghan rebels!

The encirclement and suppression in the mountains has ended, and the exhausted Soviet troops can only withdraw from the mountains in the north, and in this cold winter, the Free Afghan Army continued to launch a fierce offensive, and several cities in the mountains, Baghlan, Talukan, and Faizabad, have fallen one after another, and almost all of the entire northern part of Afghanistan have fallen into the hands of the Free Afghan Army.

The exhausted Soviet troops, under constant harassment, left northern Afghanistan and evacuated to the calm Kandahar in the south to recuperate.

In winter, large-scale battles will not continue, and the Soviet troops will need to recuperate, they are very tired and in a very poor mental state.

The winter of that year was exceptionally cold, and when Marshal Akhromeyev returned to Moscow from Turkmenistan, snowflakes began to fall in Moscow.

There are hardly any people to be seen on the streets, and the most crowded place in Moscow is in supermarkets, where you can queue for hours every day to buy the bread you need. It has become the most important part of their lives.

Kremlin.

Although the fireplace was blazing, it was still very cold, and when Marshal Akhromeyev came in, he knew what he was facing.

As the supreme commander of this battle, he returned to Moscow to report on his work, as if he had failed an exam. In his heart, there was an incomparable hesitation.

It was promised that within a year, but now it is only a few months, and it stands to reason that Marshal Akhromeyev can continue to drag on, but he is an honest man, and when he receives the order, he immediately returns.

"Honorable General Secretary." Marshal Akhromeyev first saw Gorbachev, who was sitting on the top. At this time, the other party's face was very unfriendly, Defense Minister Marshal Sokolov was sitting on the side, and he also knew the rest of the people, it was Gromyko and others.

These people did not say a word, and Marshal Akhromeyev knew that the battle in Afghanistan was very ugly, and none of these people were satisfied.

But. I've done my best.

"Well, Marshal Akhromeyev. I remember a few months ago, you patted your chest and assured me that you could end the war in Afghanistan and open the way south to the Indian Ocean. Gorbachev said: "Now. How's it going over there? ”

"General Secretary, we were talking about within a year." Marshal Sokolov on the side said.

"Well, it's within a year, but it's a few months. It put a lot of pressure on me, and I don't know if I can allocate even one ruble to the battlefield in Afghanistan. Gorbachev said: "I have a list here, and after I agreed to your battle plan, there were several big battles. Yakolev, you can read it to everyone. ”

Yakolev, a member of the Central Political Bureau, Gorbachev's most effective assistant, drafted this list, and now he took it and read it aloud.

"On 3 June this year, our side began to engage the Pakistan Air Force in the skies over Afghanistan, and in several battles, it lost a total of 48 Su-27 fighters, 46 MiG-29 fighters, 23 and 28 MiGs, and lost 87 pilots. On 18 June, the Afghan rebels suddenly diverted water from the Kabul River and flooded the Bagram base, killing 19,304 of our soldiers. From the beginning of August, our army began to encircle Jalalabad and engage in street fighting with the Afghan rebels, in which our army lost more than 13,200 soldiers and more than 17,000 wounded, of which 3,000 were seriously wounded. ”

Marshal Akhromeyev's face turned pale for a while, he knew all these losses, but now, saying it in front of so many people, he still felt a shame that was difficult to hide, and it was really a shame that the battle was like this!

"In the past, it has always been said that it is because our air force is not good, and when our new fighters enter service, we will definitely be able to seize air supremacy, but what is the result? I only saw our fighters, so many losses! Even if we don't look at the losses of the Air Force, just look at the ground, our army, our powerful army that can directly step on the whole of Europe, what is happening there? 50,000, 50,000! Gorbachev's voice roared throughout the room.

"For you, the army, iron and blood, may be just a number on a death notice, but in my eyes, it is a living person! It takes at least twenty years for a person to grow up from birth! Consume countless means of subsistence of the country! Now, they are all dying in Afghanistan! Gorbachev stood up angrily.

"But we have also eliminated more than 200,000 Afghan rebels." Seeing that Marshal Akhromeyev did not speak, Defense Minister Sokolov finally spoke: "Although we have sacrificed a lot, we still have achieved an overwhelming victory, and when we wait until the beginning of spring next year, we will continue to fight, and we will definitely be able to complete our tasks within the specified time!" ”

"But the country can't afford it!" Gorbachev's volume became louder, and the man who usually looked kind was completely angry, and his momentum was even greater than that of these soldiers who had experienced the war.

"More than 30,000 people died! Our pension for everyone is 20,000 rubles, so that's up to 700 million rubles! And we need to provide all the living allowances for more than 10,000 disabled people until their deaths, and just for the first time, it will exceed 50 million rubles, and there are countless more! As for those equipment, our lost fighters, tanks, and even more than half a billion rubles! Since June, we have invested a total of 20 billion rubles! Gorbachev said: "In your eyes, these things may not be much for our huge country, whose GDP is up to 1 trillion rubles!" However, I would like to ask you to see clearly in what areas our GDP is, in heavy industry, in the military industry! Can we eat the planes, tanks, we produce? Our country, until now, is hungry, and workers have to wait in line for hours to buy bread! We need to import a lot of food from Western Europe, but now, our country can't afford it! ”

Sokolov knew that this time Gorbachev was going to take advantage of the defeat in the Afghan war to challenge the entire military, and the army was still developing rapidly, occupying the country's precious wealth and causing temporary difficulties in the people's lives. However, if we do not develop our own army, how can we confront the United States and how can we protect the fruits of now?

"General Secretary, these expenses of our army are necessary." Marshal Sokolov said: "We, starting with General Secretary Stalin, have been sparing no effort to develop our army, and we can make the whole world tremble in front of our armed forces. ”

"Trembling? Can't even solve a small Afghanistan, and still tremble? Gorbachev said: "We, the Soviet people, are trembling with hunger!" ”

The military is incompetent, and what can be said to fight NATO, fight Europe, even a small Afghanistan can not be solved, and now, the Soviet Union can no longer let its own people continue to pay for the war, just calculated, it is only the direct loss of the war, the indirect cost of the war, even more expensive, since the early eighties, the international oil price began to fall sharply, it is because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Middle East in response to the call of the Americans, in order to support the Afghan people, began to continuously increase crude oil production, The international oil price is constantly falling, and the Soviet Union is already mining crude oil locally!

Originally, the oil industry was supposed to be one of the few profitable industries in the Soviet Union, but now, it has become an industry that the government needs to continue to subsidize, if the crude oil is not extracted, then the government will have to arrange new jobs for those oil workers, and the cost is equally high, it can be said that it was the war in Afghanistan that dragged down the economy of the Soviet Union! And if Gorbachev wants to perestroika, he must end this damn war in Afghanistan, and it is definitely not worth it to lose the entire Soviet economy for the sake of a hegemonic reputation!

Now that Gorbachev has been in power for a few months, and the ambition he had just had gradually waned, he understands his situation, after all, he is not old enough, he is not rich enough, and no matter what kind of policies he introduces, it will always infringe on the interests of certain people, and these people are secretly obstructing and guiding the reform to not proceed.

If no countermeasures are taken, then Gorbachev will achieve nothing, and the first thing he needs to do is to establish his prestige in the military!

The Soviet Union, a huge country, has long become deformed, excessively developing the military, ignoring the people's livelihood, and if he wants to cut military spending, he will meet with strong opposition, and now is a good opportunity! (To be continued......)