Soviet Farmhand Ditches Craft Off Sweden : Crop-Dusting Plane Defector’s Ticket to West

A Soviet farmhand stole a crop-dusting plane to defect to the West today, ditched the aircraft into the Baltic Sea near a Swedish island and waded ashore, police said.

Uno de Fine Licht, the chief of police in Visby on the island of Gotland, said the Soviet defector asked for asylum and was being held in custody.

He identified him as Roman Svistonov, 24, from Nikolayev, a town near Odessa on the Black Sea.

Svistonov stole the single-engine biplane, an AN-2 Colt, from an airfield in Latvia, about 100 miles west of Gotland, De Fine Licht said.

Swedish jets were scrambled to investigate when the low-flying plane was picked up on radar.

The Gotland police chief said Svistonov was a trained pilot but had left his job to work as a laborer on a state collective farm. Two weeks ago Svistonov went to Latvia to visit a friend, also a pilot.

“Early this morning, around 4 a.m., there was only one guard at the gate. He told the guard that he was going to do some repairs on the plane,” then took off, De Fine Licht said.

The crop-duster was running out of gasoline as it approached Gotland, Sweden’s largest island. De Fine Licht said Svistonov ditched the plane in shallow water when he could not find a place to land and waded about 10 yards to shore.

He said the defector refused to see a Soviet Embassy official who had come to Visby to see him.