Teen-Age Pilot to Be Tried for Flight, Soviets Indicate

Official Soviet media indicated Wednesday that a teen-age West German pilot will be put on trial for flying a light plane through Soviet airspace to Moscow’s Red Square.

A West German Embassy spokesman said officials had heard nothing further about Mathias Rust, the 19-year-old amateur pilot who has been held in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison since flying a single-engine Cessna through 400 miles of Soviet airspace last Thursday.

Editor Yegor Yakovlev wrote in the latest edition of the weekly Moscow News that prosecutors are investigating the “motives that pushed Rust into illegal acts.”

Even if the young man did not realize the consequences, “he still will have to be responsible in accordance with the law,” Yakovlev wrote. “Regardless of the motives, foreign skies are not the place for jokes.”

Under Soviet law, authorities must tell Rust within 10 days what points they are investigating. It allows two months for a preliminary investigation, but the period may be extended to as long as nine months. The accused person may be kept in prison the entire time.

In addition to the article by its editor, Moscow News carried the Soviet media’s first photograph of the plane and the first eyewitness account of exactly where the plane landed--on the cobblestones between St. Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin Wall. Previous Soviet reports said only that it landed in Moscow.

In West Germany, the national television network ZDF said Rust apparently made careful plans for his daring flight, including the purchase in March of a map showing air routes over the Soviet Union.

Tass, the official Soviet news agency, said that much remains unanswered in the case. It did not make a direct charge of political reasons for the flight but quoted extensively from West German newspaper reports, including one that said the Soviets might conclude that Rust was a “gullible victim of a far-reaching plan.”

Asked about reports that Rust had accomplices and hidden motives, West Germany Foreign Ministry spokesman Juergen Chrobog told a news conference, “We have no reason to assume that kind of thing.”

Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said Monday that Rust, who got his license only last year, could face up to 10 years in prison and a fine equivalent to $1,500. His rented plane also could be confiscated.

Gerasimov, appearing Wednesday on ABC’s program “Good Morning America,” said he believes that more Soviet officials will be dismissed or punished over the incident.

Two top Soviet defense officials have been dismissed in the affair, and Gerasimov said he believes that officials responsible for Soviet regions through which Rust flew would also be dismissed or otherwise punished.

Gerasimov said that Soviet officials are investigating three theories in the affair: that Rust was just having fun, that the flight was a promotion for unspecified manufacturers or that he was involved in a conspiracy to probe Soviet air defenses.

Rust was visited Tuesday by three West German Embassy officials in their first meeting with the teen-ager since he was hauled away after the flight. A West German Embassy spokesman said Rust “appeared calm.”

But Valentin M. Falin, a former Soviet ambassador to West Germany and now head of the Soviet Novosti press agency, told the West German Bild newspaper that Rust “talks real strange and is always smiling” and that he is undergoing psychiatric examination.