The World : 2 Soviet Soldiers Defect

Two 19-year-old Soviet soldiers serving in East Germany fled across the border on foot to the northern West German town of Wolfenbuettel and said they wanted to join their Estonian relatives in the United States, authorities reported. The men, dressed in civilian clothes, are from the Soviet republic of Estonia. The defection followed recent reports in an Estonian newspaper of a near mutiny among Estonian men who were drafted into the Soviet army for decontamination work at the Chernobyl plant that was the site of a nuclear disaster last April. Only six other Soviet soldiers have fled from East Germany to West Germany since 1969, when West German border police began a count.