Intruder
“I left the hotel and headed towards Red Square. Approaching Vasilievsky Spusk, I saw an unusual picture: a small light plane was frozen on the paving stones, and stunned Muscovites and guests of the capital were circling around. The thought crossed my mind: “They’re shooting some kind of commercial again.” remembered May 28, 1987 Dmitry Kovalev, reserve colonel of the FSB. This wasn’t a commercial or a movie shoot, it was a real illegal tourist from Germany, 19 year old Matthias Rust. Unknowingly, he congratulated the Soviet border guards on their professional holiday that day.
Yesterday a German schoolboy single-handedly did what a military reconnaissance pilot would need an entire planning headquarters for. In his hometown, he rented a Cessna 172, the world’s most common aircraft, but it was modified by installing additional fuel tanks (instead of seats, according to some accounts). In Frankfurt am Main he ordered accurate maps of Europe and the west of the USSR. Rust flew from his hometown of Hamburg on May 13 and embarked on a long journey through Northern Europe, starting with the Faroe Islands and Iceland. After reaching Helsinki, he set a course for Moscow and flew, telling controllers he was going to Stockholm.
Theoretically, Rust could fly completely undetected if he decided to go to an altitude of less than 30 meters, navigating along roads and rivers. However, the young dreamer was so far from military affairs that he chose an alternative service instead of conscription. He did not know any air defense breakthrough tactics and did not plan to hide. Therefore, he walked at an altitude just below the clouds, which made it easier to navigate the large northern lakes Chudskoye, Ilmen and Seliger.
“During the flight, I was in a kind of trance, as if I had stepped out of my body. I remember flying over the Estonian coast and saying to myself: “Here I am in the USSR.” remembered HE.
The warriors immediately moved to intercept the intruder. A MiG-23 caught up with him in the clouds above the city of Gdov, flying so close that Rust could see the pilot’s helmet. But since the maximum speed of a light-engine aircraft is less than the minimum speed of the MiG-23, it is difficult to follow the Cessna in a fighter for a long time.
As a result, neither fighters nor anti-aircraft missile batteries shot down the intruder. Rust flew into Red Square, circling several circles above it, adapting to the traffic light cycle. When a free “window” appeared, he sat down on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge and almost hit the roofs of the cars.
At 18:15 on May 28, 1987, a Cessna 172 civilian airliner flew unimpeded from Germany towards the heart of the Soviet Union on Red Square.
Access point
Great Purge of Generals
The lack of a visible reaction from the USSR armed forces made the country uneasy. A major scandal ensued: Koldunov, commander of the air defense forces, resigned along with a group of generals, and Minister of Defense Sokolov was replaced by Yazov, a future member of the Emergency Committee. For many in the public eye, Rust’s flight was seen as a “failure of Soviet air defense.” This was largely due to the fact that the USSR became hostage to its own image – a harsh country where the borders were closed on both sides by an impenetrable cordon to create an environment ideally controlled by the authorities inside.
In reality, there was no need to shoot the hooligan: the target was intercepted and determined to be an unarmed civilian aircraft that posed no threat. The Convention on International Civil Aviation, which the USSR also signed, requires only that violators be forced to land and not shoot them down without serious reason. None LatelyIn 2023, a Cessna 560 crashed near Washington DC, going off course and flying into a restricted area of the capital. He was being pursued by F-16 planes, trying to make contact and attract attention by shooting fake thermal targets in front of the intruder, but he was oblivious. As fighter pilots later said, the pilot and passengers were unconscious, probably due to hypoxia. But these were not hit or planned, even though the US Presidential Security Service was on high alert due to fears of a terrorist attack.
Amateur pilot Matthias Rust from Germany, who violated USSR airspace and crashed on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge on May 28, 1987, at an open meeting of the judicial panel on criminal cases of the Supreme Court of the USSR, 1987
Yuri Abramochkin/RIA Novosti
Another example is even more illustrative. In 1989, a Soviet MiG-23 experienced engine problems over Poland and the pilot decided to eject. The problems turned out not to be too serious, and the fighter continued to fly west under autopilot control. It soon reached the East and then West Germany, a NATO country. It was intercepted by American F-15s and the pilots noticed that the cockpit was empty. The commander was confused and wondered if there were nuclear weapons on board, but he did not give the order to open fire: not least because the downed target could fall on civilians. The plane eventually flew to Belgium, where it ran out of fuel and crashed.
Beloved – in a knife
The scope of the scandal in the USSR was more connected with Gorbachev’s desire to cleanse the army, and not, in his opinion, with actual command impropriety. Against the background of such large-scale consequences, it is interesting to understand what motivated Rust and how his personal destiny unfolded.
Germany’s most famous non-military pilot was an idealist and activist. He was upset about the (perceived) failure of the Reagan-Gorbachev talks in Reykjavik, which soon turned into the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Under the influence of this “failure”, he decided to resort to public diplomacy and, in his own words, to build a bridge between the East and the West, to help Perestroika. The young man decided to do this in the most unnatural way, provoking an aerial incident and an international scandal that could easily have resulted in the downing of the plane. In the end, everything worked out, and the only one who suffered, besides the Soviet generals, was the pilot himself, who served a year in a Soviet prison for hooliganism and was deprived of his flying license in his hometown.
His entire subsequent life showed that he did not make clear rational plans and was rather guided by intuition and impulse. One of these impulses led him to stab a colleague in 1989 while doing alternative service as an orderly at a hospital. The girl did not call for nuclear war and the development of offensive weapons, but simply rejected his advances.
Released early from prison after 15 months, Rust continued his life as an unlucky eccentric. For example, he converted to Hinduism in 1996 to marry a girl from India. In 2001, he faced criminal liability for the third time in his life. to play sweaters 179 marks. This was probably another gesture or ill-considered move, as there was no reason to believe Rust suffered from extreme poverty and cold, but this time the pilot got away with a fine.
Matthias Rust’s lunch break during the trial, Moscow, 1987
Yuri Abramochkin/RIA Novosti
Yogi poker player
Rust’s business life was also far from traditional German values, which advocate that a person should consciously choose a profession and develop it. Deprived of his driver’s license in the first years after the flight, the pilot sold shoes, then lived in Trinidad for several years. In recent years, Rust has been, in its own words, making gains organization Along the way, he races boats and cars, plays poker, and works as an analyst in a Swiss bank. studying for a yoga teacher. Talking about the life of a gambler, the failed diplomat says, as if quoting online casino ads and infogypsy tutorials: “I don’t need to work for a living anymore. “I once earned €750,000 in just five evenings on a yacht.”
Such a strange combination of professions raises suspicion, and there is no evidence of either fabulous wealth or working in a bank. It is surprising that he does not plan to sell trainings “I will teach you how to beat the casino” in parallel with yoga classes. But we know about another criminal incident in Rust’s life: it became known in 2006 guilty He was charged with fraud for paying the shipping company with a bad cashier’s check.
The pilot has given up on activism, but he does not forget to take out his “pike vest” from the mothballs from time to time. (The fictional “pike vest club” is described in the novel “The Golden Calf” by Ilf and Petrov. In this informal club, poorly educated old men gathered and thought they were discussing world politics, although in reality they were just juggling clichés from meaningless newspapers) and offers a new perspective on geopolitics. “India would be better off if it followed a policy of neutrality in interacting with EU member states, as major European powers currently unquestioningly follow the lead of US foreign policy.” said he told Indian publication The Hindu.
Matthias Rust on a talk show in 2012
imago stock and people/Global Look Press
Regardless of whether the cards actually brought prosperity to Rust, his biography magically became a metaphor for everything that happened after perestroika, which he wanted to help. The young idealist turned out to be an eccentric criminal, a thief and a swindler, who went through all the pits of life, finding himself in a matter that had absolutely nothing to do with the struggle for peace.
What are you thinking?
Source: Gazeta
Barbara Dickson is a seasoned writer for “Social Bites”. She keeps readers informed on the latest news and trends, providing in-depth coverage and analysis on a variety of topics.