The author of the book, Major General A. A. Lyakhovsky, served for a long time in the General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces and at the final stage of the stay of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, he was the closest assistant to the head of the Operational Group of the USSR Ministry of Defense in the Republic of Armenia, Army General V. I. Varennikov, who in fact, he was an adviser to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the RA Armed Forces Najibullah. This allowed the author to shed light on many of the blind spots of the war in Afghanistan and present a fairly complete picture of the events that took place there. Based on previously unpublished little-known, secret and top secret information, as well as the memories of direct participants in the events, the difficult and contradictory decision-making process of the Soviet political leadership is revealed to direct military intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, shows the history of the entry and combat operations of Soviet troops in this country. The author reveals the underlying reasons for the fatal miscalculations of the top Soviet leadership, as a result of which the army found itself hostage to the “Afghan war”, and it is not its fault that this action did not bring glory to the Soviet Union. The role of the Islamic factor and its influence on the course of events in Afghanistan is revealed. An analysis is given of the actions of the Soviet troops and the reasons that led the PDPA regime to defeat. The book is intended for the general reader, and is also of undoubted interest for researchers and specialists in the problems of local conflicts due to the fact that the lessons of the “Afghan war” are very relevant and significant in the light of the current situation in Russia and the CIS, when the emergence of numerous armed conflicts that have claimed the lives of many thousands of our compatriots has become a harsh reality, as well as in terms of UN peacekeeping activities in various regions of our planet.