| abstract | - Cold War tensions between the increasingly hawkish United States and increasingly paranoid Soviet Union had escalated to a level not seen since the Cuban Missile Crisis because of several factors like the United States' Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), its planned deployment of Pershing II missiles in Western Europe in the March and April of 1983, and Exercise FleetEx '83, the largest fleet exercise held to date in the North Pacific and Exercise Able Archer 83 in Western Europe. On April 4,at least 6 American aircraft flew over Zeleny Island in southern Kurile Islands, which were close to the border with Japan, as part of the Exercise FleetEx '83. In retaliation the Soviets ordered an overflight of America's Aleutian Islands and complained to the UN over the American's airspace violations. Several aircraft from USS Midway and USS Enterprise had repeatedly overflown the Soviet military installations in the disputed Kurile Islands (Japan had lost them to the USSR in 1945 and wanted them back) during FleetEx '83, resulting in the dismissal or reprimanding of Soviet military the officials who had been unable or unwilling to shoot them down. The Soviet's politically paranoid and bigoted military and political hierarchy (in particularly the 'communist old guard' led by the Soviet General Secretary, Yuri Andropov, and the Soviet Defence Minister, Dmitry Ustinov,) fear that the USA was both warwaky, militarily provocative, political bigoted and trying to undermine the post Cuba Crisis understanding on how they should act during peace time; they were deeply suspicious of US President Ronald Reagan's intentions and openly fearful he was planning a first strike nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. The Soviet's huge Exercise Zapad-81 had already annoyed NATO, Finland and Poland already. The Soviets's intelligence gathering mission Operation RYAN (Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie (Russian: Ракетно-ядерное нападение, "Nuclear Missile Attack")) was expanded. It was a plan to find out where the USA was planning to nuke in a possible surprise nuclear attack. The Soviet leadership were convince the American were hell bent on having a war with the USSR and were addicted to using nukes in any wars with the USSR and China.
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