Red Square Flier Freed by Soviets in ‘Humane’ Move : Repentant Youth Tells Gratitude

The Soviet Union today freed a repentant Mathias Rust from prison, sending home to West Germany the young pilot who buzzed the Kremlin’s spires in Red Square and triggered a shake-up in the Soviet Defense Ministry.

Rust was taken from Lefortovo Prison, where he had been serving his four-year sentence, and flown to Frankfurt aboard a Lufthansa Airbus A-300 jet.

“I realize that I have committed serious criminal offenses and the fact that the Presidium of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet freed me from punishment before I served my term is an act of humanism,” the official Tass press agency quoted Rust as saying before his departure.

Wants to Hug Parents

“My greatest desire for the time being is to hug my parents as soon as possible,” Rust said.

The West German media hailed his release, although a TV station reported that Rust, 20, could face charges back home of fraud and endangering air traffic for the daring stunt.

Tass said the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the country’s highest executive body, decreed earlier in the day that Rust be freed and said this demonstrates the nation’s “humaneness.”

Rust told a Tass correspondent that he has no complaints about his treatment in captivity and that he was eager to return to his family and friends in Wedel, near Hamburg.

Feels Relations Improved

“I think this also attests to the overall improvement of relations between our two countries,” Rust was quoted as saying.

“Mathias Rust Is Free!” the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper trumpeted in a banner headline today after his release was announced in Moscow. Underneath was a picture of the bespectacled Rust with his tousled hair.

Tass accused Rust of an “unprecedented act of hooliganism in the air” when he penetrated Soviet airspace in a single-engine Cessna on May 28, 1987, near the air corridor used by international flights approaching Moscow.

Rust’s dramatic flight from Helsinki, Finland, to Moscow, through some of the most heavily defended airspace in the world, shook the foundation of Soviet security and prompted the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei L. Sokolov and Air Defense chief Alexander Koldunov.

Soviet Jets Scrambled

Soviet jets scrambled to intercept Rust’s plane when it was detected crossing into Soviet airspace, but no action was taken to halt the flight and apparently no word of warning about the incident was sent forward to Moscow.

A tourist videotaped the final minutes of Rust’s flight, capturing the Cessna’s gentle swoop over Red Square before coming to rest before dozens of stunned spectators. Rust, then 19, greeting bewildered onlookers after his landing on the cobblestones.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Sokolov were in Berlin for a Warsaw Pact meeting at the time of Rust’s flight. Two days after Rust’s landing and arrest, Sokolov was sent into retirement for the lapse and Koldunov was fired.

Promoting World Peace

Rust said at his trial that he made the flight to promote world peace. But the Soviet Supreme Court said Rust was interested in promoting himself.

He was found guilty Sept. 4, 1987, of illegally entering the Soviet Union, violating international flight rules and malicious hooliganism, and was sentenced to four years in a Soviet labor camp.

He remained in Lefortovo, however.

West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher brought up the Rust case when he traveled to Moscow for talks with Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders last week to prepare for the scheduled October summit between Gorbachev and West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.