Mathias Rust, an 18-year-old German, was at the helm of the plane that landed on Red Square in 1987. A joke immediately appeared that in the center of Moscow there is now Sheremetyevo-3 Airport. The Soviet generals were no longer in the mood for jokes - many lost their posts, up to the Minister of Defense.
Matthias Rust himself, who has served time both in the USSR and at home since that time, recently in an interview with the Stern magazine called that his flight irresponsible and added that now he definitely would not repeat it. However, it cannot. The sky of Europe is still closed to him, although history itself is not closed even 25 years later.
Matthias Rust prefers to be in control. He recently returned from Latin America. There he again passed on the pilot. I flew. In Europe, Rust has not been allowed to fly a plane for 25 years.
“Sometimes I dream about that flight, usually in the afternoon when I take a nap after lunch. And if there is some free time, memories pop up on their own,” says Matthias Rust.
Rust sat on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge. Then he drove to Vasilyevsky Spusk, willingly signed autographs, spoke, brought a letter of peace to Gorbachev. They even brought him bread and salt. And it seemed that the iron curtain was just a smoke screen, because everything was so simple.
“Flight maps were available. The KGB still didn’t want to believe me that I just ordered them, like any other road atlases. Then they themselves ordered the same maps through the Soviet embassy in Bonn and were very surprised when they received them ", - says Matthias Rust.
Here is the itinerary of an 18-year-old pilot who flew only 50 hours at that time: a long flight from Germany over the sea to the Faroe Islands, followed by Iceland (Reykjavik), Norway (Bergen), Finland (Helsinki), and then almost at random to Moscow. He was guided by railway. This part of the route is full of the most amazing coincidences. Rust's plane flew into the area of the rescue operation. The bomber crashed. Lots of helicopters in the air. "Cessna" Rust is mistaken for a light-engine Soviet aircraft. Then he is once again assigned the code "I am mine." At the same time, Rust was discovered immediately after he crossed the state border and could have been shot down, including on approach to Moscow.
“We have S-300 systems, it takes a target at 100 meters. And if I launch three missiles at this shabby airplane and they explode at a height of 50-100 meters, and under the bottom there will be kindergarten What am I going to do next? It was a provocation planned 100% advantageously,” said Vladimir Tsarkov, commander of the Moscow Air Defense District in 1987-1989.
Tsarkov claims: Rust's flight is an operation of the Western special services. And the border violator himself is a well-trained pilot, and he has already visited Moscow in advance. Rust says: sat at random.
“Without visiting the place, it is impossible to land in such difficult conditions. What if a cable passes over the road there, it’s unknown,” said Michael Hanke, an instructor at the Pegasus Pilot School.
And although pilots of the same planes in Germany still sometimes jokingly say: "Well, let's wave to Moscow," they all understand that such an adventure would be impossible now.
In fact, the flight of Matthias Rust had practically no effect on the development of small aircraft in Europe. Influenced by the September 11 attacks. After them, a special device is installed on any aircraft, which transmits the individual aircraft identification number to ground services. That is, on the radar it is no longer just a dot, but a dot with its own unique number, that is, for example, this plane cannot be confused with any other in the air.
The Soviet court sentenced Matthias Rust to 4 years in prison. He served a little more than 14 months in an exemplary colony. After his release, his fate was not easy. He returned to Germany, but even after that he broke the law. First, an attack on a woman with a knife. Time again. Then stealing a sweater from a department store. Explains - barely making ends meet.
"It all worked out because it had to happen. It's just my destiny," says Matthias Rust.
The aircraft in which Rust made the historic flight is on display at the Technical Museum in Berlin. Here is one of the symbols of the end cold war. However, his wings are still decorated with signs resembling a bomb. There are too many questions in this story today. The materials of the pilot Rust's case are still classified.
On September 4, 1987, exactly thirty years ago, the trial of the scandalous case of Matthias Rust, a young German amateur pilot, who, a few months earlier, on May 28, 1987, landed on his plane on Red Square - in the very heart of the Soviet capital, ended with a guilty verdict .
The Cessna-172 aircraft, piloted by 18-year-old German citizen Matthias Rust, landed right at St. Basil's Cathedral in the center of Moscow. The Soviet leadership was in real shock. After all, not only did the plane of a simple German guy cover the distance from the Soviet border to the capital of the country and was not shot down by air defense systems, this event also happened, which is very symbolic, on May 28 - Border Guard Day. It was a real slap in the face of the entire Soviet system. Naturally, Matthias Rust was arrested immediately after the plane landed.
Almost immediately after Rust's plane landed on Red Square, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Mikhail Gorbachev decided to dismiss a number of top military leaders, primarily those who were responsible for the air defense of the Soviet state. The highest-ranking "retiree" was the Minister of Defense Soviet Union 72-year-old Marshal Sergei Sokolov. He has held this position since 1984, replacing the deceased Marshal Dmitry Ustinov. Prior to his appointment as Minister of Defense, Marshal Sokolov from 1967 to 1984, for seventeen years, was the First Deputy Minister of Defense of the USSR. A participant in the Great Patriotic War, Marshal Sokolov was one of the most prominent Soviet military leaders. In particular, from 1980 to 1985. he was in charge of managing the activities Soviet troops in the territory of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. However, the flight of the German youth cost the respected marshal his career. Of course, they could not throw the honored military leader “on the street” - already in June 1987 he took the post of inspector general of the Group of General Inspectors of the USSR Ministry of Defense.
In addition to Marshal Sokolov, Air Chief Marshal Alexander Koldunov, who served as Commander-in-Chief of the Air Defense Forces of the Soviet Union and was directly responsible for the security of the airspace of the Soviet country, was dismissed immediately after the flight of Matthias Rust. Twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Alexander Koldunov went through the Great Patriotic War as a fighter pilot, after the war he served in the fighter aviation of the Air Force, and then in the air defense. 
He took the post of commander-in-chief of the Air Defense Forces in 1978, nine years before the flight of Matthias Rust. But not only the top military leaders have lost their positions. About 300 senior officers were dismissed from the service. A powerful blow was dealt to the personnel of the Soviet armed forces. They also found "scapegoats" - two officers of the Air Defense Forces received real terms of imprisonment. They were Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Karpets, who was on duty at the Tallinn Air Defense Division on the day of Rust's flight, and Major Vyacheslav Chernykh, who was on duty at the radio engineering brigade that ill-fated day.
As for Rust himself, after being detained on Red Square, he was arrested. On June 1, a few days after the flight, Matthias Rust turned nineteen years old. The young German celebrated his birthday in prison. The whole world followed the fate of the guy who demonstrated that the defense system of the Soviet Union was by no means "iron". And it really was so - with outright traitors who penetrated the top leadership of the Soviet state, it simply could not be iron. Naturally, without "providing" on the actual high level Rust's flight would simply be impossible. He would have been shot down in the worst case while still in the sky over Estonia. However, Rust was literally given the green light to fly all the way to the Soviet capital. This could only happen with the sanction of the highest Soviet leaders. It is not very clear who specifically gave the go-ahead for Rust's landing on Red Square, and it is unlikely that we will ever know about it. But it is obvious that it was a person or people who were part of the most top group Soviet elite.
The displaced military leaders were in opposition to the course that by this time the Soviet leadership, headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, had begun to pursue. Attacking the command of the armed forces was one of the main tasks of those people who were behind the methodical and systematic destruction of the Soviet state. After all, the famous marshals and generals who went through the Great Patriotic War and were real patriots of the Soviet state could simply not allow all those manipulations with the country that led to the 1991 disaster. Subsequently, the American military expert William Odom even compared the "cleansing" of the Soviet military elite after the flight of Matthias Rust with the repressions against Soviet military leaders that took place in 1937-1938. Interestingly, after each such purge, three or four years later, a catastrophe ensued. In 1941, the terrible Great Patriotic War, and in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, and this process was also accompanied by rivers of blood in the former Soviet republics, numerous military conflicts, riots, an unprecedented wave of crime and violence.
Therefore, it is hardly worth evaluating the act of Matthias Rust as a "harmless prank" of a young romantic aviator. Most likely, a carefully thought-out and organized provocation took place here, in which Western intelligence agencies, and an impressive cover from the Soviet side. At least, many prominent Soviet and Russian military leaders agree in this opinion, who believe that without the "Kremlin roof" the flight of Matthias Rust would have ended tragically for him. The purpose of organizing such a flight was to weaken the Soviet state by solving the following tasks: 1) creating a pretext for a large-scale "cleansing" of objectionable top military leaders, 2) discrediting Soviet system defense in the eyes of the citizens of the USSR and the world community, 3) strengthening anti-Soviet sentiments in society. It was after the flight of Matthias Rust and the dismissal of the Minister of Defense of the USSR Marshal Sergei Sokolov that Mikhail Gorbachev began a rapid reduction in the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union. Rust's flight in this context was another argument - why do we need "such an army", and even in "such numbers" that missed the flight and landing on Red Square of a sports plane of some German youth.
It is noteworthy that shortly before Matthias Rust's flight, USSR Minister of Defense Marshal Sokolov personally reported to Mikhail Gorbachev on how the air defense system of the Soviet state was organized and how it worked. Leaving the general secretary, Sokolov forgot some documents from him, including a very secret map. But the next day, when he tried to return the documents, Gorbachev said that he did not remember where they were. This version was subsequently voiced, according to a number of publications in the Russian media, by Colonel General Leonid Ivashov. Be that as it may, the majority of military leaders agree on one thing - the action with the flight of Rust was thought out and planned. There is another very interesting version, according to which Rust landed on Red Square with full tanks of fuel, which indicates only one thing - he was refueled somewhere on Soviet territory. And they could do this only directly under the control of the "omnipotent" Soviet KGB.
The trial of Matthias Rust was scheduled for September 2, 1987. Matthias Rust was charged under three articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR - illegal crossing of the air border, violation of international flight rules and malicious hooliganism. In the definition of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR, hooliganism was interpreted as deliberate actions that grossly violate public order and express clear disrespect for society, while malicious hooliganism was understood to mean the same actions, but accompanied by "exceptional cynicism or special insolence." Airplane landing on Red Square, where many Soviet people, was regarded as such. For malicious hooliganism, the Criminal Code of the RSFSR provided for liability in the form of imprisonment for up to five years or corrective labor for up to two years. Violation of the rules of international flights provided for an even wider range of punishment - from one year to ten years in prison, however, under the same article it was possible to get off without a real term - by paying a large fine.
At the trial, Matthias Rust said that he flew to Moscow in order to demonstrate to the Soviet people his desire for peace. However, the prosecution did not heed these arguments of the young German. The prosecutor asked for Matthias Rust under three articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR ten years in prison. But the trial turned out to be much more lenient than the accusation.
On September 4, 1987, Matthias Rust was sentenced. He was sentenced to four years in prison. On the one hand, anti-Soviet elements in the Soviet Union itself and the world community immediately expressed indignation at such, from their point of view, cruel reprisal against the "messenger of peace." On the other hand, on the contrary, today there are many questions about the verdict, which seems to some to be overly liberal. Firstly, those articles of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR were applied to Matthias Rust, which were not tough and could not entail such serious measures as, say, the death penalty. Secondly, all the same, four years of imprisonment for such an act of state significance looked very strange, especially in comparison with what ordinary Soviet citizens were then given four years for.
The mildness of Rust's sentence testified that no one was going to punish him seriously. In the old days, when the Soviet Union was really an opponent of the capitalist West, Matthias Rust would have received at best ten years in distant northern camps, and at worst he would have simply been sentenced to death. But in 1987 the situation changed. It is possible that the liberal measure of punishment for Rust was to demonstrate to the West the further readiness of the Soviet Union for "democratization".
In early August 1988, less than a year after litigation, Matthias Rust was amnestied and safely left for his homeland. In pre-trial detention and in the colony, the young German spent only 14 months. In fact, Mikhail Gorbachev generously forgave Matthias Rust for the biting slap in the face of the Soviet Union and Soviet army in front of the eyes of the whole world. Of course, “Western friends” persistently asked for Matthias Rust (by that time Moscow was already looking at the West with wide eyes), German Chancellor Helmut Kohl could personally turn to Mikhail Gorbachev. Mikhail Sergeevich, who a few years later successfully transferred the GDR to the FRG, could not refuse his West German colleague.
The decision to release Matthias Rust was enthusiastically received both in the West, where it once again confirmed the weakening of the superpower and its readiness to concede to the West from now on in everything, and in the Soviet Union itself, since anti-Soviet sentiments at that time in society were already very strong, especially among the "active" part of society - the capital's intelligentsia, young representatives of the nomenklatura. Both the flight of Matthias Rust, and the lenient sentence, and his imminent release demonstrated the beginning of changes in the life of the Soviet Union and fit perfectly into Gorbachev's perestroika. First they forgave Rust, then they allowed the GDR to be included in the FRG, to overthrow all the pro-Soviet regimes in Eastern Europe, and in the end, to destroy the Soviet Union itself.
By the way, the life of Matthias Rust after returning to his homeland in Germany was very interesting. Some actions perfectly characterize the true image of the "messenger of peace." So, already in November 1989, after 15 months after his release from the Soviet colony, Matthias Rust, who by that time was doing alternative service in a hospital in Riessen, began to look after a nurse. He invited her on a date, and after the nurse refused to go with him, he stabbed her with a knife. For this, Matthias Rust was arrested - already "native" German authorities. In 1991, he was sentenced to four years in prison - just the same term was given to Rust for landing on Red Square. But after 15 months, Rust was released from prison (and it repeats again - in the USSR he was released after fourteen months).
In 1997, ten years after his flight, Rust, who by then lived in the distant West Indies, in the state of Trinidad and Tobago, converted to Hinduism and married a local girl of Indian origin. Then he returned with his young wife to his homeland, to Germany, but in 2001 he again came to the attention of the police - this time for stealing a sweater in one of the supermarkets. In the mid-2000s, twenty years after his flight, Matthias Rust claimed he wanted to "build bridges" between West and East. But oh true history his flight, he still prefers to remain silent.
On May 28, 1987, on the Day of the Border Guard, a sports aircraft of the American manufacturing company Cessna violated the airspace of the Soviet Union. He landed in the capital not far on Vasilyevsky Spusk in the very vicinity of Red Square. Namely, he landed on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge and coasted to St. Basil's Cathedral. A huge number of video cameras and cameras of tourists recorded this moment, when the pilot got out of the cockpit, he was surrounded by people who wanted to take an autograph. He was arrested ten minutes later. The violator turned out to be Matthias Rust, a nineteen-year-old athlete pilot. His father is an aircraft salesman in Germany. At 14:20, Ruta's plane crossed the air border of the USSR at an altitude of 600 m above the Gulf of Finland near the town of Kohtla-Järve (Estonia). This was recorded by air defense radars, as a result of which the missile battalions were put on full alert. The fighter was sent to intercept the Cessna aircraft. He quickly discovered him, but no command was given to shoot him down. Therefore, the intruder's plane was "led" almost to Moscow itself. Since 1984, the Soviet Union had an order that forbade opening fire on sport/civilian aircraft.
It is unlikely that Rust knew that at about 15:00, when he was flying in the area of the city of Pskov, the local air regiment would be conducting training flights there. Some planes were landing, others were taking off. Equally at three o'clock, the code of the state recognition system was replaced, which meant the simultaneous change of the code by all pilots. However, many inexperienced pilots did not perform this operation: lack of experience or forgetfulness summed it up. Be that as it may, the system recognized them as "alien". In this situation, one of the commanders could not figure it out and assigned all the aircraft the sign "I am mine", including the Rust sports aircraft. He made a further flight with a local air registration. But there was also a secondary legalization near Torzhok, where rescue work was carried out as a result of a collision of our planes - a low-speed German Cessna was mistaken for a Soviet search helicopter.
Newspapers of that time were full of headlines: “The country is in shock! The German pilot-athlete dishonored the serious huge defense arsenal of the USSR on the Day of the Border Guard. Also, the world media put forward more "romantic" versions - the guy tried to win a bet or impress the chosen one. They also said that the flight of Matthias Rust is nothing more than a marketing ploy. Since his father sold Cessna aircraft in Western Europe, and the rate of sales for this period just decreased. It is clear that such a PR move was the impetus for aircraft sales. After all, in fact, this is the only aircraft that managed to "defeat" the air defense system of the USSR. The Soviet military were sure that such an action was the intrigues of foreign intelligence services.
After this incredible incident, many people began to invent various jokes on this topic. For example, to refer to Red Square as "Sheremetyevo-3". No less popular was the joke that the Moscow-Leningrad highway is the softest, as it was covered with hats of generals and colonels. After the Russian people passed the state of shock, he began to have fun with his characteristic enthusiasm. An anecdote was born about two pilots who met on Red Square, one of whom asked for a cigarette, to which the other replied: “What are you?! You can't smoke on the airfields! And one more thing: a crowd of people with things gathered on Red Square. Passers-by ask: “What are you doing here?” To which they answer: “We are waiting for a plane to land from Hamburg.” There was another story that police were patrolling near the fountain of the Bolshoi Theater. "For what?". “What if an American submarine emerges from there?”
Punishment of Matthias Rust
On September 2, 1987, the Judicial Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court for Criminal Cases began hearing Rust's case. He was accused of hooliganism. According to the court, his landing threatened the lives of people who were on the square. He illegally crossed the border and violated aviation law. The case was held in open session. Lost their posts: Alexander Koldunov (Head of the Air Defense Forces), Sergei Sokolov (Minister of Defense) and about three hundred other officers.
Matthias Rust himself at the trial said that his flight was a "call for peace." On September 4, 1987, he was sentenced to four years in prison for violating flight rules, illegally crossing the border, and malicious hooliganism. In total, he spent 432 days in pre-trial detention in prison, and the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet pardoned him, but he was expelled from the USSR.
Rust returned to Germany, but in his homeland he was remembered as a madman who threatened the world. He was permanently stripped of his pilot's license. He worked as a nurse in a hospital in the city of Rissen. During his regular duty in November 1989, Rust attacked a nurse with a knife, who refused him a kiss, for which the court decided to put him in jail for four years, but after keeping him in prison for five months, he was released.
In the middle of 1994, Rust announced that he was going to live in Russia again. Then he disappeared for 2 years. Some said that he was selling shoes in Moscow, others spread rumors about his death. In fact, Rust traveled a lot. After seeing the world, upon returning to his homeland, he announced that he was going to marry the daughter of a wealthy tea merchant. The wedding ceremony was held in India according to the local rite. After the wedding, he and his wife returned to Germany. In 2001, he again appeared before the court. This time he was accused of stealing in a department store, where he was going to pull off a cashmere pullover. As a result, the court sentenced him to a fine of 5,000 euros. As for his personal life, not everything worked out here either - he is divorced. According to him, he wanted to have a family, many children, but he just could not find the only one who would understand him. He makes his living as a professional poker player. At the same time, he restored his documents in South Africa and is going to fly again.
On May 28, the Soviet Union celebrated the Day of the Border Guard. In 1987, this holiday was hopelessly spoiled by the Soviet border guards - in the center of Moscow, near St. Basil's Cathedral, a foreign plane landed.
Light aircraft "Cessna-172", piloted by an 18-year-old German Matthias Rust, had a huge impact on the history of the Soviet Union.
Landing on Red Square was the reason for the resignation of the Minister of Defense Sergei Sokolov and the Commander-in-Chief of Air Defense Alexandra Koldunova, who were opposed to politics Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as for a large-scale "purge" in the ranks of the Soviet military, which, according to foreign experts, was comparable only to the "purge" of the "great terror" of the late 1930s.
Even 28 years later, there is no consensus on whether Rust's flight was the prank of a lone youth or an elaborate intelligence operation.
Rust himself insisted years later that it was a mission of peace. Inspired by the thaw in relations between West and East, the young man decided to build an "air bridge" by flying to Moscow and landing in the very center of the Land of Soviets.
Lost over the Baltic
Rust received his pilot's license in 1986 at the Hamburg Aeroclub. In the same flying club in May 1987, the German rented a Cessna-172, and also received detailed maps required for the flight. According to Rust, he did not inform anyone about his true intentions.
Starting on May 13 from the airport of Uetersen, Rust reached Iceland on May 15 through the Shetland Islands and the Faroe Islands. On May 22, the German flew to Norwegian Bergen, from there on May 25 to Finnish Helsinki.
In the capital of Finland, he made the final decision to fly to Moscow.
On the morning of May 28, having refueled the Cessna, Rust took off from the airfield, declaring Stockholm as the target. The airfield staff noticed that the Cessna was not only filled to capacity, but additional fuel tanks were also installed in the cabin. The flight to Stockholm obviously did not require such an amount of fuel. Nevertheless, Rust was allowed to take off.
The Cessna took off at 12:21, and twenty minutes later the plane left the airport control area. Rust stopped communicating with the dispatch service, turned to coastline Baltic Sea and at about 13:00 disappeared from Finnish airspace near Sipoo.
The disappearance of the Cessna was regarded by Finnish dispatchers as a possible accident, raising the alarm for rescue services.
"Cessna" was led from the very border
Rescuers found an oily spot in the sea, which allowed them to conclude that a disaster had occurred. Where the stain came from is not clear to this day. Subsequently, when it became known where Rust's plane actually flew, the Finns billed him for 100 thousand dollars for the work of rescuers. True, when there was a big fuss around the world around the flight, the lawsuit was withdrawn.
"Cessna" Matthias Rust at that moment crossed Soviet border near the town of Kohtla-Jarve and headed for Moscow. The pilot was guided by a magnetic compass and pre-planned objects - Lake Peipsi, Lake Ilmen, Lake Seliger, the Rzhev-Moscow railway line.
Immediately after the flight of Rust, a persistent myth appeared that the military, who were celebrating the Day of the Border Guard, “slammed” the intruder aircraft, as they say. Actually it is not.
At 14:10 "Cessna" was detected by radio equipment of air defense units. Three anti-aircraft missile battalions were put on alert, but they did not receive orders for destruction.
Rust's aircraft was also later visually detected near the city of Gdov by Soviet fighters, who identified it as a "sport aircraft of the Yak-12 type".
The Cessna was flying at low altitude and low speed, and the fighters were unable to escort the light aircraft. Therefore, having flown around the intruder, they returned to base.
To shoot down - it is impossible, to plant - it does not work
The picture of the helplessness of the Soviet military in front of Matthias Rust, which is firmly entrenched in many, is completely wrong. Indeed, the air defense system is built with an eye on much more serious and dangerous targets than a light aircraft.
Nevertheless, the Cessna was spotted and could have been destroyed. However, orders for such actions were not received from Moscow.First of all, because the history of the destruction of the passenger South Korean Boeing on September 1, 1983 dominated the USSR. And although in that story, by and large, there was no fault on the Soviet side, the Kremlin in no way wanted a repetition of such an incident.
In addition, the report of the pilots confirmed that we are talking about a light civilian aircraft, and the Soviet military did not have the right to shoot down civilian aircraft. Actually, it was the same in the case of the South Korean Boeing, since it was mistakenly identified as an American reconnaissance aircraft.
The Convention on International Aviation, also known as the "Chicago Convention", prescribes that in case of violation of the airspace of countries by light-engined sports aircraft, they should not be shot down, but forced to land. It was not possible to plant Rust with the help of combat fighters for the reasons described above, and the military did not quickly find another way.
Rust Bridge
Thus, the Cessna flew safely to Moscow at 18:30. As Rust himself said, he wanted to sit in the Kremlin or on Red Square, since he simply did not know other places in Moscow. But there were no conditions for landing in the Kremlin, and there were a lot of people on Red Square.
As a result, the pilot, entering from the direction of Bolshaya Ordynka, landed on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge, which with good reason can be called Rustov Bridge from that time, and coasted to St. Basil's Cathedral.
Curious people gathered around the plane. Rust got out of the cab, began to communicate with people. Among Muscovites and guests of the capital there was a schoolboy with excellent knowledge foreign language who served as a translator. The German pilot began to take autographs.
Surprisingly, in the first minutes, there were no special services among those who surrounded Rust. Only the policeman on duty asked if the pilot had a visa and, having learned that it was not, left the German alone.
While Matthias Rust was telling Muscovites about his desire to talk with Gorbachev, the military appeared, cordoned off the plane, but did not take tough actions. It was only around 20:00 that three people in civilian clothes suggested that Rust come in to give explanations.
Later, the pilot said that he was interrogated somewhere near Red Square. This is not surprising - Muscovites know that the complex of buildings of the State Security Committee is within walking distance from the Kremlin.
Lefortovo hospitality
We communicated politely with Rust, asking who organized the flight and what his goals were. The German insisted - he was for peace and friendship, he flew in to express his support for Gorbachev.
He really supported Gorbachev - thanks to his flight, the Soviet leader dealt a powerful blow to the positions of the military, who critically assessed his policies.
But Gorbachev did not want to meet with Rust. The hopes of the German that he would be reprimanded and released were not justified either. He was charged with hooliganism, violation of aviation law and illegal border crossing. On September 4, 1987, Matthias Rust was sentenced to 4 years in prison.
In fact, Rust spent only 432 days in the Lefortovo pre-trial detention center. Although they treated him correctly, the German was in a depressed state. And in vain - the Soviet prison looked like a much more pleasant alternative than the surface-to-air missile, which could well have "visited" Rust during the flight.
In the summer of 1988, the famous head of the USSR Foreign Ministry, and at that time the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Andrei Gromyko, signed a decree amnestying Rust. On August 3, 1988, the pilot returned to Germany, where for some time he became a very popular person.
An open meeting of the Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the USSR in the case of German citizen Matthias Rust, a 19-year-old amateur pilot, who is accused of violating the rules of international flights and malicious hooliganism. Photo: RIA Novosti / Yuri Abramochkin
"It was an irresponsible act"
However, it didn't last too long. Rust was again remembered in the fall of 1989, when he was already on trial in Germany. He did an alternative service in a hospital, where he stabbed a nurse who did not share his love feelings. In 1991, a German court sentenced Matthias Rust to 4 years - that is, to the same term as the Soviet court had previously. As in the USSR, in Germany they showed leniency towards him, releasing him after 15 months in prison.
Rust then traveled the world, married an Indian, converted to Hinduism, became disillusioned with both his wife and religion, returned home, where he was again on trial - in 2001 he was caught stealing a sweater in a department store.
It seems that the memories of the flight to Moscow have become for him the main business of life. He willingly meets with journalists, talking about him, for his 25th birthday in 2012 he even released a memoir.
Then, in 2012, the Stern magazine published the opinion of 44-year-old Matthias Rust about his act committed in May 1987: “Now I look at what happened in a completely different way. I certainly would not repeat this and would call my then plans unrealizable. It was an irresponsible act."
Eighteen-year-old German boy Matthias Rust became famous all over the world - and disgraced the Soviet border guards on their main professional holiday
Even today, almost thirty years later, the controversy over the identity of a simple German student Matthias Rust, which brazenly landed on Red Square, flew through all the border cordons, do not subside. It is still not clear who he was - an ordinary air hooligan, adventurer, provocateur or spy (and whose), it is still not clear how he managed to make his famous flight, experts are haunted by many mysterious circumstances that became clear after scandalous landing of a young German in the very heart of the USSR.
Spoiled Border Guard Day
On May 28, 1987, a small, like a toy, plane taxied from the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge towards Red Square. The hosts of the nearby concert were surprised, but in a country where everything was happening on a grand scale, one could expect anything, even a plane landing in its very heart.
The concert dedicated to the Day of the Border Guard continued, but the events unfolding on the square became more and more strange. The plane was surrounded by policemen, then the military appeared, pushed back the formed crowd. A young guy who piloted a sports Cessna smiled and kindly told that he was a “dove of peace”, that he flew in to “shake hands Gorbachev”,“ build bridges ”,“ peace to the world ”and so on.
There were many more beautiful and grandiloquent phrases. But is it really so cloudless, harmless and naive?
Looking at the chain of events that the visit of the allegedly peaceful-minded handsome German hippie led to, it's hard not to think that this flight was prepared in advance and that much smarter and more experienced people had a hand in its preparation than the 18-year-old "naive guy".
Suppose that everything happened exactly as Rust himself presents his act to the public: a naive idealist, carrying peace to the whole world on the wings of the Cessna, unjustly offended by the judicial system of the “evil empire”. Appearing in one of the television programs, Matthias Rust said that he did not want to harm anyone, and believed that the risk was minimal for everyone. What he knew: no one would get hurt, even if there were people at his landing site. Where such confidence? Is it really possible to assume that at almost 19 years old (Rust was born on June 1) a person does not calculate at least the most elementary consequences of his actions? Didn't Rust understand that if he managed to bypass the air defense systems, someone would have to answer for it and the most serious measures would be taken against the offender?
Did he really think that he would be met with flowers and taken to Gorbachev as a hero? Didn't he know that he had become a target over the territory of a foreign country, and only a miracle could save him from turning into a firebrand a few hundred kilometers from Moscow?
Instead of asking himself such simple questions, Matthias calmly prepared the plane and without hesitation sent it to Moscow. He acted skillfully, fitting into the air corridors for civilian ships, using weather conditions in order to break away from observation.
The military says that during the entry of Rust into Soviet airspace, a Finnish fighter was patrolling along the border, and several metallized balloons were lifted into the air in order to divert air defense systems located in the area.
The Cessna itself was also not chosen by chance: it is not clearly displayed on the radars and in general looks like a flock of birds. It can easily be lost when transferring from one area covered by radar to another, which happened several times.
Strange Details in the Matthias Rust Case
Matthias Rust flew to Moscow in an orange overall instead of the green jacket in which he took off from the point of departure; during his flight, stickers appeared on the fuselage of the aircraft with atomic bomb. He called this image in an interview "a counter-bomb designed to fight for world peace."
Little of. Given the cruising speed of the Cessna, Rust's plane was supposed to fly to Moscow 2 hours earlier. Where has he been all this time? Why did an inspection of the plane show that its fuel tanks were almost full, even though it had flown 880 kilometers? By the way, in the early 2000s, a version was voiced that Rust's plane was refueled near Staraya Russa.
How did it happen that for several days in a row before the passage of Rust, the military did not change the radar field, which, according to the regulations, changes every 24 hours? Like they were waiting. Subsequently, information also appeared that the air defense on duty that day spotted the plane - but the reports recorded a “flock of birds”.
Why was the fighter, which went to intercept the intruder and circled it twice, not given a command to destroy or to force a landing? Why, if Rust did not hide from Soviet radars, his route did not run in a straight line, as in his other flights? Why did they cut the trolleybus wires on the bridge on which Rust was supposed to land? And finally: where did three professional cameras with cameramen “accidentally” come from on the square, who managed to capture the scene with the plane from three points of high quality? Recall that at that time television cameras capable of giving such a high-quality picture could not fit in a jacket pocket.
There are many such questions. And over the years, the answers to them do not appear. And there are more and more guesses. The series of "accidents" that Matthias is trying to justify his unthinkable luck is too great.
