W. German Teen-Ager Says Peace Was His Goal : Regretful Red Square Pilot Admits Guilt

Mathias Rust, the 19-year-old West German pilot who shook the Kremlin last May by landing his light plane at the edge of Red Square, pleaded guilty Wednesday to making an illegal flight, but he said it was a mission for peace.

Rust was quoted by Tass, the official Soviet news agency, as telling the court as his trial began that his unprecedented flight from Helsinki, Finland, across heavily defended Soviet territory, was undertaken in the hope that he could see Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and discuss ways to ease world tension.

He acknowledged that he was not altogether sure that he could locate Red Square. He said he switched off his plane’s radio because he did not want to hear any instructions to change course.

“I certainly did this alone,” Rust told the court. “I regret what happened. My chief aim was to make an impact on world opinion. I saw no other possibility to achieve my goal.”

According to the Tass account, “the tips of the defendant’s ears reddened slightly when he tried to convince the judges that . . . he pursued only one aim--to carry out a mission of peace.” Tass said he asked to be forgiven.

Rust faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He is charged with illegally crossing the Soviet border, violating flight regulations and “malicious hooliganism,” a Soviet legal catch-all for anti-state activity.

He was escorted into the courtroom by two policemen, who remained at his side in the prisoner’s dock. He was dressed in a dark blue suit, a blue shirt and matching tie. His hair was cut short, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses.

After the indictment was read, Judge Robert G. Tikhomirov asked the defendant to respond.

“The guilt is clear to me,” Rust said, speaking calmly and without apparent emotion.

“On all three points?” the judge said.

“Yes,” Rust replied.

Later, reading a statement that went on for 80 minutes, he insisted that his May 28 flight was not an act of hooliganism. His plea was not changed, however.

Along with Soviet reporters, a total of 25 foreign news correspondents were permitted to be present for the trial, which is expected to last through Friday. Also on hand were Rust’s parents, his brother, Ingo, 14, and a representative of the West German Embassy.

Because Rust has acknowledged his guilt, the main question to be resolved is the severity of his punishment.

Soviet officials have already been punished. Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov was placed on the retired list, and other high military officials were dismissed for lack of vigilance.

Judge Tikhomirov questioned Rust closely on his reasons for undertaking the flight, suggesting that if he wanted to promote peace, he might have landed at the Bonn residence of West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

“I was seeking the source of peace, and the source of peace is not in Bonn but in Moscow,” Rust replied.

Asked if he was aware of the laws governing access to the Soviet Union, the frontiers of which are among the world’s most tightly guarded, Rust said:

“In general. I know there are laws. I know flights need permission.”

U-Turn Toward Moscow

As for finding another way to express his interest in peace, he said, “I thought of these possibilities, but I did not think they would have a big enough resonance.”

Rust spoke as if he had memorized the words.

He said the idea for the flight came to him after Gorbachev and President Reagan failed to reach an arms control agreement at their meeting last October in Iceland.

“I found it a shame that there were no positive results,” he said.

Last March and April, he said, he acquired three maps and planned his route across the Soviet Union. On the morning of May 28, he took off from Helsinki airport, initially heading west toward Sweden, then made a U-turn and flew east toward Moscow instead.

An hour after he crossed the Soviet border in Estonia, he said, a Soviet military plane appeared to his right and accompanied him for a time, then flew away. It was at that point, he said, that he switched off his radio.

He arrived over Moscow about 6 p.m., he said, and flew toward the center of the city.

“I knew the Kremlin only from a map,” he said. “I was not certain I would find it.”

But once he sighted the block-square Rossiya Hotel, not far from Red Square, he knew he had reached his destination.

Crowds of pedestrians prevented his landing there, he said, so he put the plane down in an area slightly south of the cobblestoned square.

“I have a lot of experience landing planes in small places,” he said.

Rust spoke in German, and his words were put into Russian simultaneously by a team of two interpreters. He was provided with an earphone that gave him a German-language account of the proceedings.

His mother, Monika, left her spectator’s seat and took the witness stand to vouch for her son.

“He is a young man of noble heart,” she said, “but he is lacking experience.”

In his remarks, Rust said he had thought a great deal about ways to build an ideal society without the drawbacks of either capitalism or communism.

“I had hoped to have the possibility of meeting the Soviet leadership, especially Gorbachev, to tell him my thoughts,” he said.

In addition to presiding Judge Tikhomirov, who is a justice of the Soviet Supreme Court, two lay assessors are also taking part in the conduct of the trial. They are Vasily Kuznetsov, a master workman at the Zil auto and truck plant, and Juta Kletenberg, a production engineer at a factory in Tallinn, Estonia.

Rust was represented by a German-speaking Soviet attorney, Vsevolod Yakovlev.