Mathias Rust

Mathias Rust

Mathias Rust (born June 1, 1968) is a German (West German at the time) aviator known for his illegal landing near Red Square in Moscow on May 28, 1987. An amateur pilot, the teenager flew (in a rented Reims Cessna F172P D-ECJB) from Hamburg, West Germany to the Faroe Islands (Denmark) to Iceland to Norway to Sweden to Finland, to Moscow, the Soviet Union being tracked several times by Soviet air defense and interceptors. The Soviet fighters never received permission to shoot him down, and several times his airplane was mistaken for a friendly aircraft. He landed on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the Soviet Union.  After taxiing past St. Basil's Cathedral he stopped about 330 ft from Red Square, where he was greeted by curious passersby and was asked for autographs. When asked where he was from, he replied "Germany" making the bystanders think he was from East Germany (friendly to the USSR); but when he said West Germany (unfriendly to the USSR), they were surprised.

Rust said he wanted to create an "imaginary bridge" to the East, and he has said that his flight was intended to reduce tension and suspicion between the two Cold War sides.

Rust's flight through a supposedly impenetrable air defense system had great effect on the Soviet military and led to the dismissal of many senior officers, including Minister of Defense Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov and the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Defense Forces, former World War II fighter ace pilot Chief Marshal Alexander Koldunov. The incident aided Mikhail Gorbachev in the implementation of his reforms, by allowing him to dismiss numerous military officials opposed to his policies. Rust was sentenced to four years in prison (for violation of border crossing and air traffic regulations, and provoking an emergency situation upon his landing). He was officially pardoned by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet Andrei Gromyko, and released after 14 months in prison. He returned to West Germany on August 3, 1988. 

While doing his obligatory community service (Zivildienst) in a West German hospital in 1989, Rust stabbed a female co-worker who had rejected him. The victim barely survived. He was convicted of attempted manslaughter and sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but was released after 15 months.  Since then he has lived a fragmented life, describing himself as a "bit of an oddball."  After being released from court, he converted to Hinduism in 1996 to become engaged to a daughter of an Indian tea merchant. In 2001, he was convicted of stealing a cashmere pullover and ordered to pay a fine of DM 10,000, which was later reduced to DM 600. A further brush with the law came in 2005, when he was convicted of fraud and had to pay €1,500 for stolen goods.  In 2009 Rust described himself as a professional poker player. Most recently, in 2012, he described himself as an analyst at a Zurich-based investment bank.

Because Rust's flight seemed like a blow to the authority of the Soviet regime, it was the source of numerous Russian jokes and urban legends. For a while after the incident, Red Square was jokingly referred to by Muscovites as Sheremetyevo-3 (Sheremetyevo-1 and -2 being the two terminals at Moscow's main international airport).  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust