ARTICLES Alexander Hill - Soviet Navy in Sub - Saharan African...

The Cold War Soviet Navy in Sub- Saharan African Waters From the Republic of Guinea to Angola and Mozambique.
Alexander Hill
The dramatic growth in Soviet naval power during the late 1960s and 1970s gave the Soviet Union a global reach that was conspicuously absent during the early 1960s, and most prominently so during the Congo and Cuban Missile Crises. In 1960, during the Congo Crisis, Soviet attempts to support Patrice Lumumba’s government in Leopoldville – including with the help of the newly independent Ghana – were hampered by a shortage of allies in the  region and the Soviet Union’s lack of capability to effectively project power beyond the Eurasian landmass. Western powers were, for example, only too  aware of the Soviet Union’s lack of capabilities for mounting a robust sealift  into the region. The subsequent and very limited airlift of Ghanaian and  Congolese troops using Soviet aircraft was not only limited in scale but also  logistically extremely challenging for a Soviet Union lacking a network of allies in Africa.

The TAVKR “Novorossiisk” at sea in 1984. Her visit to Luanda the previous
year was a major show of support for the Angolan government.