page_title: Mathias Rust
section_title: Aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Mathias Rust / Aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: The Cessna 172 Mathias Rust used for his famous flight from Finland to Moscow in 1987. It is now being displayed at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin Deutsch: Die Cessna 172, mit der Mathias Rust 1987 von Finnland nach Moskau flog als Ausstellungsstück im Deutschen Technikmuseum Berlin
context_page_description: Mathias Rust is a German aviator known for his illegal flight that ended with a landing near Red Square in Moscow on 28 May 1987. An amateur pilot, the then-teenager flew from Helsinki, Finland, to Moscow, being tracked several times by Soviet air defence and interceptor aircraft. The Soviet fighters did not receive permission to shoot him down, and his aeroplane was mistaken for a friendly aircraft several times. He landed on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, next to Red Square near the Kremlin in the capital of the Soviet Union.
  Rust said he wanted to create an "imaginary bridge" to the East, and that his flight was intended to reduce tension and suspicion between the two Cold War sides.
  Rust's flight through a supposedly impenetrable air defence system had a great effect on the Soviet military and led to the dismissal of many senior officers, including Minister of Defence Marshal of the Soviet Union Sergei Sokolov and the Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, former World War II fighter ace pilot Chief Marshal Alexander Koldunov.
context_section_description: Rust's trial began in Moscow on 2 September 1987. He was sentenced to four years in a general-regime labour camp for hooliganism, for disregard of aviation laws, and for breaching the Soviet border. He was never transferred to a labour camp, and instead served his time at the high security Lefortovo temporary detention facility in Moscow. Two months later, Reagan and Gorbachev agreed to sign a treaty to eliminate intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe, and the Supreme Soviet ordered Rust to be released in August 1988 as a goodwill gesture to the West.
  Rust's return to Germany on 3 August 1988 was accompanied by huge media attention, but he did not talk to the assembled journalists; his family had sold the exclusive rights to the story to the German magazine Stern for DM100,000. He reported that he had been treated well in the Soviet prison. Journalists described him as "psychologically unstable and unworldly in a dangerous manner".
  William E. Odom, former director of the U.S. National Security Agency and author of The Collapse of the Soviet Military, says that Rust's flight irreparably damaged the reputation of the Soviet military. This enabled Gorbachev to remove many of the strongest opponents to his reforms. Minister of Defence Sergei Sokolov and the head of the Soviet Air Defence Forces Alexander Koldunov were dismissed along with hundreds of other officers. This was the biggest turnover in the Soviet military since Stalin's purges 50 years earlier.
  Rust's rented Reims Cessna F172P (serial #F17202087), registered D-ECJB, was sold to Japan where it was exhibited for several years. In 2008 it was returned to Germany and was placed in the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin.
caption: D-ECJB at the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin (2010)
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