In 1987, 18-year-old Mathias Rust flew a rented Cessna through the USSR's entire air defence network and landed beside Red Square, humiliating the Soviet military at the height of the Cold War. West German diplomacy ensured he served his sentence in an ordinary prison in Moscow rather than a Gulag.
BTW the Cessna was confiscated.
KGB dragged it off to Sheremetyevo and stripped it down to the last rivet, panels off, wiring torn out, hunting for hidden kit that was never there.
Legally it's simple enough, a foreign aircraft that plonks itself down uninvited outside the Kremlin falls straight under the host state's own jurisdiction, fair game for seizure under its security and customs powers, no treaty required.
Rust did his stretch in Lefortovo, then got sprung early in 88 as a goodwill gesture to the West.
The Cessna outlived the whole saga, changed hands a few times, did a stint in Japan, and finally settled for good in a museum in Berlin, still bearing the scars of that KGB teardown.
Went home to Germany a free man, was back behind bars within the year for stabbing a colleague
BTW the Cessna was confiscated.
KGB dragged it off to Sheremetyevo and stripped it down to the last rivet, panels off, wiring torn out, hunting for hidden kit that was never there.
Legally it's simple enough, a foreign aircraft that plonks itself down uninvited outside the Kremlin falls straight under the host state's own jurisdiction, fair game for seizure under its security and customs powers, no treaty required.
Rust did his stretch in Lefortovo, then got sprung early in 88 as a goodwill gesture to the West.
The Cessna outlived the whole saga, changed hands a few times, did a stint in Japan, and finally settled for good in a museum in Berlin, still bearing the scars of that KGB teardown.
Went home to Germany a free man, was back behind bars within the year for stabbing a colleague
