In 1959 the USSR established the 615th Guards Engineer
Regiment, based just outside of Slavuta.
Slavuta is a town about 15 miles east of Ostrog. In the 19th Century, Slavuta was
one of the larger towns in the Ostrog area and may have been well known to my
Ratzlaff ancestors as well as the other Mennonites living in the German
villages of the Karolswalde Circuit. In
1960, the regiment was renamed the 615th Guards Missile
Regiment and became attached to the 37th Guards Missile Division
based in Lutsk, Volhynia (60 miles to the NW of Ostrog), itself a division of
the 43rd Red Banner Missile Army.
The 43rd was an army of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces which
controlled the USSR’s land based inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The 615th consisted of two battalions, each with
4 R-12 (SS-4) pads. The first battalion
went on alert duty in 1961 and the second in 1964. Both battalions were stood down in February
of 1984. Alternate sources indicate that
the 615th was equipped with R-5M missiles (instead of R-12 missiles). The Slavuta site appears to have been the
third location in the Soviet Union to be equipped with nuclear missiles and the
R-5M was the first Soviet missile to be armed with a nuclear warhead. From 1960-1984, NATO designated these launch
sites as the“Ostrog MRBM (medium range ballistic missile) Complex”, with launch
sites 1 and 2. Two alternative launch
sites were set up at Slavuta and Shepetovka (25 miles to the SE).
In 1985, the 615th went on alert duty equipped
with 9 RSD-10 Pioneer-UTTKh (known to NATO as SS-20) missiles. In
1988, the USSR deployed 405 RSD-10 missiles throughout the country, including
those manned by the 615th. This
regiment was stood down in 1991 and disbanded.
In 2005, a paper published by the Bonn International Center for
Conversion regarding ex-Soviet weapons housed at Ukrainian sites, claimed that
there were still 20,000 tons of ammunition kept at the Slavuta sites.
These sites, located in the Ostrog Forest, are in positions
that were in or very near Ostrog Powiat in the 19th Century. The first site sat just northeast of Bilotyn,
and the second between Khorovytsia and Komyny.
In addition to these two sites, additional barracks and a railroad depot
were located on the southwest side of the town of Slavuta.
The ruins of these sites can be seen today on Google
satellite views. At the first site,
remains can be seen of workshops, barracks, mess-halls, stores, parade grounds,
a gym, a firehouse, and a shooting range, as well as numerous warehouses. At the second site, similarly, ruins of
barracks, warehouses, and hangars can be seen.
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