Soviet Afghanistan Medals with documents

[IrishGunner]

I already had the Soviet Warrior Internationalist Medal, but with the wrong ribbon; so, I was looking to upgrade to the correct ribbon. Today I came across the medal and luckily it also had the document. Along with it was the Medal from a Grateful Afghan People and its document. A perfect upgrade.

PS: If anyone is looking for these medals, I now have two extra - but as I said, the Warrior Internationalist has the wrong ribbon. PM if curious.

[IrishGunner]

Warrior Internationalist document cover; this is a large size document.

[IrishGunner]

The Grateful Afghan People document - in two languages.

[IrishGunner]

The inside of the Afghan Grateful People document

[Mervyn Mitton]

Rick - outside of my interests - however, attractive medals with the enamel + of course the paperwork. The thought occured to me that the Russian Afghan debacle wasn't that long ago - would make a great post comparing numerical strength with the present allies , casualties and of course objectives gained. Just a thought if you had the interest ? Mervyn

[Ferdinand]

The name of the recipient is Volodya Zhorayevich Asatryan. Interesting, since it's the - I don't know how to call it in English - abbreviated, informal form of the name (≈ nickname). Officially the name is Vladimir. It's the same as for example Ivan - Vanya, Tatyana - Tanya, Nikolai - Kolya, etc. It is very uncommon to see this informal form on official documents.

[IrishGunner]

Ferdinand - thanks for the assist with the name; curious about the nickname.

Mervyn -

A NY Times article from May 1988 reported that the Soviet Government announced that 13,310 soldiers had been killed, 35,478 wounded in Afghanistan between Dec 1979 and May 1988 - 8 1/2 years. I have read that at the peak there were between 100,000 and 115,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

From NATO's website: Since NATO took command of ISAF in 2003, the Alliance has gradually expanded the reach of its mission, originally limited to Kabul, to cover all of Afghanistan’s territory. Accordingly, the number of ISAF troops has grown from the initial 5000 to around 120 000 troops from 47 countries, including all 28 NATO member nations.

However, recent news reports at the end of August say that the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops has brought the total number of international forces in Afghanistan to 140,000 — 100,000 of them American. The US Operation Enduring Freedom - Afghanistan began in October 2001; going on 9 years now - longer than the Soviets.

According to iCasualties.org there have been 2065 coalition casualties since 2001; 1275 being American.

Here's the link to the web page if anyone is curious how many casualties there have been by country: http://icasualties.org/oef/