It had a twenty-inch entrenching shovel with four steel teeth on it.

Such engagements started with the 1989 violent incident in Tbilisi when VV servicemen used entrenching shovels to decimate a crowd of unarmed civilians.

During the 20th century, the ancestor of the modern entrenching tool appeared in the form of the handled entrenching shovel or spade, designed to be used with both hands, yet more compact than traditional, full-sized engineer shovels or spades.

Soviet Spetsnaz units were well trained in the use of the standard short-handled Russian entrenching shovel ("saperka") as a weapon; by the nature of their missions, such tools were only rarely used for digging or entrenching positions.

Brutality Alleged "The soldiers strapped their entrenching shovels to their hands," said the witness, Yuri Rost, a magazine writer and photographer who said the protesters were defenseless, sitting in the town square and watching folk dances when the troops moved in.

Being too long and heavy to be transported by individual soldiers, entrenching shovels and spades were normally carried in the supply carts (logistics train) of a military column; only pioneer or engineer troops typically carried spades or shovels as part of their individual equipment.