# Did American and Soviet troops ever actually shoot at each other in the cold war?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-american-and-soviet-troops-ever-actually-shoot-at-each-other-in-the-cold-war/679998>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 28, 2014, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-american-and-soviet-troops-ever-actually-shoot-at-each-other-in-the-cold-war/679998 "2014-01-28T23:56:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2018, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-american-and-soviet-troops-ever-actually-shoot-at-each-other-in-the-cold-war/679998/41 "2018-03-01T00:55:01Z")

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From “Americans and Russians Fought a Battle in Syria — It’s Time to Care,” David French _[NRO](https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/us-russia-syria-implication-serious/)_:  
If reports of hundreds of Russian dead are correct [in the recent Syrian battle], the American military just killed more Russians than it did in any single encounter throughout the entirety of the Cold War. That’s stunning.

_Inter-alia_, the author cites the following unverified transcript [reported [here](http://www.businessinsider.com/russia-leaked-audio-humiliating-defeat-by-us-forces-2018-2)] from a Russian mercenary:

The reports that are on TV about … well, you know, about Syria and the 25 people that are wounded there from the Syrian f\*\*\* army and — well . . . to make it short, we’ve had our asses f\*\*\* kicked. So one squadron f\*\*\* lost 200 people … right away, another one lost 10 people . . . and I don’t know about the third squadron, but it got torn up pretty badly, too. . . . So three squadrons took a beating. . . . The Yankees attacked . . . first they blasted the f\*\*\* out of us by artillery, and then they took four helicopters up and pushed us in a f\*\*\* merry-go-round with heavy caliber machine guns … They were all shelling the holy f\*\*\* out of it, and our guys didn’t have anything besides the assault rifles . . . nothing at all, not even mentioning shoulder-fired SAMs or anything like that . . . So they tore us to pieces for sure, put us through hell, and the Yankees knew for sure that the Russians were coming, that it was us, f\*\*\* Russians . . . Our guys were going to commandeer an oil refinery, and the Yankees were holding it. . . . We got our f\*\*\* asses beat rough, my men called me . . . They’re there drinking now. . . many have gone missing . . . it’s a total f\*\*\* up.

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