The rest, as they say, is history. Sadat, who had rejected the advice of the Soviet Union on October 12 to seek a ceasefire, and who continued to reject that advice until, too late, he accepted it on October 19, now found himself begging for Soviet help.
25 Oct 1100 hours: A meeting of the Armed Forces Supreme Council, the first since the outbreak of war. ...The main topic was, of course, how to open the road to Third Army. But though everyone spoke with passion, nobody could come up with a realistic plan.
"My men and I are ready to die to open the road to the Third Army," Qabiyl (Brigadier of the 4th Armored division) said. "But I have to say I do not think we will succeed. And if our division is destroyed the road to Cairo will be wide open."
To stay alive the Third Army needed rather over 150 tons of supplies a day. The vast column of soft-skinned vehicles needed to carry such quantitiies would simply be an added burden on the tank crews of 4th Division as they fought their way down the road.
Egypt had no choice but to accept every humiliating condition. By such tactics the Israelis kept Third Army on the brink of collapse, the better to use it as a hostage against the conditions they now wanted to impose.