Who was behind the tragedy of the Ovechkin family and their innocent victims in the plane hijacked by a jazz band?
On March 8, 1988 on board the Tu-154, flying from Irkutsk to Leningrad, a festive mood reigned. But halfway through, everything suddenly changed. Not all women survived on International Women's Day. Instead of flowers, a stewardess will receive a bullet, and the mother of the family will be killed by the hands of her own son, who demanded to change the route and fly abroad. In general, this hijacking of the aircraft will become one of the most difficult pages in the history of Soviet air travel - in terms of the number of victims and unanswered questions.
What did they lack?
In the famous photograph of 1985 - Olga, Tatiana, Oleg, Ninel Sergeevna (holding Ulyana and Sergei by the shoulders), Alexander, Mikhail, Dmitry and Vasily Ovechkin. Igor, who was photographing the family, and the absent Lyudmila, were not included in the frame. Films have been made about these people, but reality always differs from its artistic interpretation.
The country from which the Ovechkins wanted to escape, presented them with two three-room apartments. There was also a house with a subsidiary farm on the outskirts of Rabocheye. The title of “Mother Heroine” was held by the head of the family, mother of eleven children, Ninela Sergeevna Ovechkina, who at the time of the hijacking was 51 years old.
Ninel Sergeevna grew up without a father - he was sentenced to a long term. Over time, she lost her mother: she was shot by the watchman while trying to steal potatoes from a protected field. Between the birth of her children, Ninel Ovechkina worked as a saleswoman. Widowed by the mother of the family four years before the tragedy. The father of the children of Dmitry Dmitrievich died in 1984. The family jazz band "Seven Simeons" was created by seven sons a year before his death.
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The ensemble was headed by Vasily (drums), Oleg (saxophone), Dmitry (trumpet), Igor (keyboards), Alexander (double bass), Mikhail (trombone) and Sergey (banjo) played with him. The participants were between 8 and 26 years old. Officially, members of the ensemble were listed as musicians at the amalgamation of city parks "Leisure"
In the mid-1980s, the eldest sons Vasya, Dima and Oleg took turns joining the army - they served in the "red barracks" in Irkutsk. By that time, the talented nuggets were already known in their city: the documentary film of the East Siberian Film Studio told about the unique team.
Out of competition, seven members of the home ensemble were enrolled in the legendary "Gnesinka". But "Simeons" left musical science already in the second year of study - due to tours, including foreign ones.
In 1987, the Ovechkins performed in Japan. Abroad, according to the story of one of the family members who survived the terrorist attack, Soviet amateurs received an offer to release a disc either in an English or an American record company. It was then that "Simeons" and agreed to change their lives, escaping from the USSR. We decided to hijack a plane in order to get the whole family abroad. Sister Olga, who was selling in a kiosk near the Angara restaurant, and schoolchildren Misha, Seryozha, Ulyana and Tanya, who were from 9 to 14 years old, were taken to this risky event.
I will move to London
What prompted a completely prosperous family to such a resonant adventure? Or maybe it would be more accurate to ask who? However, we are unlikely to find out about this. If we recall the chronology of the collapse of the Soviet Union, events of this kind became then commonplace. And the bloody massacre of an exemplary creative family that "chose freedom" was an excellent illustration of the inhumanity of the totalitarian communist regime. By the way, the Ovechkins could have stayed abroad in Japan, but then, due to chance, this plan could not be implemented. But this could have been done during the next trip abroad. And the USSR was left with nothing at all. For some reason, it took just such a loud show with the hijacking of the plane …
An exemplary family has been developing its daring plan for six months. In flight, the Ovechkins were supposed to go with firearms and explosives. The luggage of the musicians who allegedly flew to a concert in Leningrad consisted of hundreds of cartridges, homemade bombs and two sawn-off shotguns. To carry weapons on board, they worked on a case for a double bass - during the inspection, the modernized case did not fit on the conveyor belt and was not X-rayed.
How the group of passengers managed to avoid the luggage screening is a mystery. The arsenal of weapons is not a needle in a haystack, and it was unrealistic to carry it aboard without hindrance, even for technically imperfect times. The explanation that the airport employees knew "Simeonov" by sight, and therefore did not expect surprises from them, does not stand up to criticism: it was not Kobzon and Zykina, you must agree, were flying …
Home-grown "stars", meanwhile, calmly passed the pre-flight control and in full ammunition boarded the Tu-154, en route from Irkutsk to Leningrad. And just as calmly, as if they had received assurances of safety, after refueling in Kurgan, they demanded to change course to London.
It's a takeover
The Ovechkins wrote their demands in advance in a note that was passed on to the pilots through the flight attendant: “We are flying to London. Otherwise we will blow up the plane! As a sign of determination, the older brothers aimed 16-gauge shotguns at the cabin.
Why didn't the crew use their emergency weapons? The pilots had Makarov pistols with them, and they had the right to neutralize the invaders with kill shots. After all, the lives of 76 passengers were at stake.
The co-pilot was ready to deal with the terrorists and asked for permission from the crew commander. But, having weighed their strength and thinking about the possible consequences, the pilots decided to rely on instructions from the ground. However, as subsequent events showed, it would be better if they tried to neutralize the criminals with their own forces …
Experts took over the leadership of the operation to capture the terrorists. And while the state security forces were preparing for the meeting of the aircraft, the crew had to try to negotiate concessions with the invaders.
According to the instructions, flight engineer Innokenty Stupakov had to convince the armed bandits that there would not be enough fuel left for London. We'll have to take a refuel. The plane will fly abroad if the Simeons are released during the landing of passengers. But the terrorists recalled that they dictate the conditions here: the hostages will fly with them.
Instead of Kotka - Veshchevo
Then the course was set for Finland. In words. Stewardess Tamara Zharkaya reassured the criminals that the aircraft was preparing to land at the airport in the Finnish city of Kotka. In fact, the meeting place of the liner was supposed to be the Veschevo military airfield located near Vyborg.
The crew did everything so that the terrorists would not suspect deception, and relied on the professionalism of the special services, which were instructed to neutralize them. Alas, for some reason on earth everything went wrong as it should have happened according to the rules of countering terrorism.
When at 16:05 the plane landed in Veshchevo, … the Soviet military appeared in the windows. They did not even bother to change their clothes - if not in the work uniform of airport employees, then at least in neutral civilian clothes. Someone on the go tore off the cockade from the headdress, while others ran to the liner in uniform.
When a tanker with an inscription in Russian "Flammable" taxied to the plane, the Ovechkins realized: they had been deceived. In a fit of anger, 24-year-old Dmitry point-blank shot Tamara Zharkaya, a flight attendant who was in the cabin.
The mother of the terrorists ordered to attack the cockpit. When the assault failed, and it was not possible to break through to the pilots, the brothers promised to start massacring the passengers. They refused to let the women and children go. Refueling and departure, otherwise it's all over!
Operation "Imitation"
I had to simulate preparation for takeoff. A flight engineer was released outside and began to open the fuel tanks. The fuss with refueling was a cover for the arrival on board of two capture groups: one was to enter the plane from the side of the cockpit, the other from the tail. The operation began simultaneously with the taxiing of the Tu-154 to the runway. But its result can also be called "imitation". The special forces soldiers actually turned out to be … employees of the patrol and guard service. It is not surprising that they failed to cope with any task to save the situation: they failed to save either human lives or the plane.
Having opened fire, the rapid reaction group that burst in from the side of the cockpit did not hit a single terrorist, but wounded four passengers. The Ovechkin musicians showed much better fire training: they wounded several security officers in a shootout, and the soldiers took refuge from bullets in the armored cockpit. The members of the second group, who entered the cabin through the hatch in the rear, could not boast of their successes. Aiming at the feet of the invaders, they fired the entire clip of cartridges by …
Terrible denouement
The passengers squeezed into their seats, expecting reckoning for the inept actions of the would-be stormtroopers. Now they will definitely be killed by invaders who have nothing to lose. But the terrorists took a different decision. The Ovechkins conferred with their mother and detonated the bomb. The explosion killed one of the brothers - 19-year-old Alexander. Then Ninel Sergeevna ordered the surviving children to shoot themselves. And the first to stand under the sawn-off was herself: the elder son Vasily pulled the trigger without hesitation.
The plane was on fire, the passengers panicked. And the invaders died in cold blood. The next under the bleed was 24-year-old Dmitry, followed by 21-year-old Oleg. 17-year-old Igor did not want to die: he hid from the brotherly sight in the toilet. Then 26-year-old Vasily shot himself.
Meanwhile, the passengers opened the door and, in the absence of the ladder, began to jump from the height of the fuselage to the ground, where they were not very politely "received" by the security forces. People were saved from the flames, but not from injuries and fractures.
The "release" of the hostages ended at 20:00. The result turned out to be deplorable: the exploded Tu-154B airliner worth 1.4 million rubles burned to the wreck, 9 people died (five terrorists, a flight attendant and three passengers suffocated in the smoke), 19 people were wounded and injured (two Ovechkins, two policemen and fifteen passengers). It was the "liberators" who put bullets into the passengers and contributed to the massacre of the cornered terrorists over the stewardess. And from the family of invaders, the soldiers neutralized only a child: they severely wounded Seryozha in the thigh. In addition to young children and Igor, who escaped the fraternal execution, 28-year-old Olga survived from the flying Ovechkins.
In general, I must say that this "operation to free the hostages" was carried out surprisingly unprofessionally, to say the least, and raises a lot of questions …..
Dim and rude people
“Of all the Ovechkins, I am sorry except for Olga - I remember how she hugged two children clung to her in fear,” recalled the commander of the captured aircraft No. 85413 Valentin Kupriyanov.
“The first impression about nice and well-groomed guys turned out to be deceptive,” said flight attendant Valentina Nikolaeva. - Subsequently, the terrorists showed their bestial grin. Oleg, who changed in his face, threw me into a chair and pointed a sawed-off shotgun in my face. He said that I would go out with them in Finland. Seeing that I was shivering, he suddenly handed over the jacket he had taken off. An angry brother Vasily promised to "bang" me, saying that "one flight attendant has already been killed." But when he aimed the barrel at me, Oleg did not allow to shoot. Although he himself was going to shoot flight engineer Stupakov, who had deceived the gas station. I dissuaded him with great difficulty."
“The Ovechkins behaved aggressively, like a poorly coordinated gang,” co-pilot Alexander Anisimov shared his impressions. - Apparently, they are not very literate people. And the bomb was homemade, and they couldn't get into the cockpit bypassing the door, and they were hysterical before the assault, like children deceived in anticipation of a gift.
And here is how their neighbors characterized the Ovechkins: “This family was not considered with other people - even children”, “They were not friends with anyone”, “Lordship, arrogance, pride and quarrelsomeness”, “Rudeness, impudence and eternal mat”, “Narrow and rude people."
Life is awry
The investigation into the hijacking of the aircraft lasted about five months. 17-year-old Igor was sentenced to eight years in prison, 28-year-old Olga - to six. Both were released, having served half the term, but life did not work out for anyone. Igor was soon arrested for drug trafficking and died at the hands of a cellmate in a pre-trial detention center, and Olga was killed in a drunken quarrel by her roommate.
The fate of the youngest daughter Ninela Sergeevna Ulyana is also unenviable: she, like her father in her time, made friends with alcohol and twice threw herself under the car while drunk. She was crippled and disabled, and her husband died.
The trombonist Mikhail is also disabled today - after a stroke he lives in a hospice. True, not in his native Irkutsk and not in St. Petersburg, where for some time he played in various jazz ensembles, but in Barcelona, where he moved to a permanent place of residence and earned a living from music.
Nothing is known about Tatyana who settled in Cheremkhovo after marriage and the birth of a child - she changed her name and got lost, like her brother Sergei, who played with Igor in restaurants.
After 9-year-old Seryozha, 10-year-old Ulyana, 13-year-old Misha and 14-year-old Tanya, who participated in the terrorist attack, were released from the Irkutsk pre-trial detention center, where they went on a hunger strike and hanged themselves, the younger Ovechkins were given to be raised by their older sister, 32-year-old Lyudmila … With her husband and three children of her own, she lived separately from her relatives and did not participate in the capture. She did not know about the impending terrorist attack, but had to sort out its consequences. After registration of custody of the younger brothers and sisters, the family of ten huddled in one room. To her in Cheremkhovo (a mining town not far from Irkutsk) Lyudmila took not only underage orphans, but also two nephews: Larisa, who was born in prison, the daughter of Olga's sister, who was pregnant at the time of her arrest (Larisa later entered the university), and her younger brother Vasya,which, after the death of his mother, was also put on his feet by his aunt.
At the same time, Lyudmila refused to publicly repudiate the criminal mother (all the Ovechkins killed on the plane were buried in Vyborg) and did not agree to hand over their relatives to the care of a Dutch businessman who offered a lot of money for the opportunity to revive such a loudly advertised brand "Seven Simeons" …
In 1999, the film "Mom" was shot, in which the facts of the Ovechkin's biography are interpreted quite freely. The Ovechkins did not like the film, especially because of the distortion of the reasons as a result of which their prototype family decided to hijack a passenger plane. Igor Ovechkin was outraged and threatened to sue the filmmakers: “Nobody even asked for our opinion. Everyone learned from the newspapers. The authors of "Mama" did not understand anything about what had happened."
There were predecessors too
This is hard to believe, but in the history of Soviet and Russian passenger aviation, there are more than a hundred cases of hijacking of civilian airliners - about 30 successful and over 90 failed. Moreover, more than 100 people were killed, not counting two dozen killed terrorists.
For example, on June 15, 1970, a group of Soviet dissidents attempted to hijack an aircraft in order to escape from the USSR. Former pilot Mark Dymshits with Hillel Butman invented Operation Wedding, which was supposed to become not only a way to get a group of Soviet Jews to Israel, but also a political action to influence the Soviet leadership, which did not let them out of the country.
As planned, the agreed passengers of the Tu-124 (up to 50 people) supposedly fly to a Jewish wedding from Leningrad to Murmansk. It was planned to land the plane after the capture in Finland or Sweden. In case of force majeure or the refusal of the pilots to fly abroad, a hijacker who had flying practice was going to take control of the airliner.
But for a number of reasons, the original plan underwent changes, and it was decided to seize the maize who was going from Leningrad to Priozersk. After the pilots were neutralized, the same Dymshits was going to take over the An-2 piloting. At low altitude, he had to cross the border and sit down in the Swedish Buden, asking for asylum from the authorities.
Thirteen people agreed to take part in the seizure (anti-adviser Eduard Kuznetsov, who served seven years, and family clans, including the wife and two daughters of Mark Dymshits), as well as two Russian dissidents - Yuri Fedorov and Alexey Murzhenko.
However, the action was failed: the secret services learned about the plot of the conspirators. At the gangway in Leningrad, 12 people were arrested and four were detained in Priozersk. They took the KGB officers and Hillel Butman, although he refused to participate in the hijacking of the plane at the decisive moment. A case was opened against him about the Zionist underground.
With the approval of the West
No sooner had the USSR condemned the "Dymshits group", as four months after their arrest, on October 15, 1970, An-24 was captured by armed Lithuanian terrorists. The next invaders were father and son: 45-year-old Pranis Brazinskas and 13-year-old Algirdas. With sawn-off shotguns, they killed 19-year-old flight attendant Nadezhda Kurchenko and wounded several people, opening fire on passengers and crew. The plane landed in Turkey, where the terrorists surrendered to the authorities: they were not handed over to the Soviet Union.
To prevent this case from becoming an example for the new hijackers to follow, Mark Dymshits and Eduard Kuznetsov were sentenced to death in December 1970 on a combination of articles (treason to the Motherland, hijacking an airplane and anti-Soviet agitation) (however, they subsequently replaced the death penalty with 15 years in prison). The other ten participants in the conspiracy received sentences from 4 to 15 years. And nine years later, the USSR exchanged five hijackers for two Soviet intelligence officers convicted in the United States, and Kuznetsov and Dymshits emigrated to Israel. In the same 1979, other participants in the failed hijacking were released. Among them was Joseph Mendelevich, who was later personally received at the White House by US President Ronald Reagan.
Loud thefts
And finally, five more sensational facts of air terrorism, where there were both victims and heroes.
On May 1, 1978, a terrorist demanded to land a Soviet Il-18 aircraft in Iran, en route from Ashgabat to Mineralnye Vody. The co-pilot killed the invader, and the plane was planted in Ashgabat.
On July 5, 1983, terrorists seized a Tu-134 flying from Moscow to Tallinn. The invaders demanded to fly to Sweden or England. The criminals were neutralized by an employee of the field communications, who used personal weapons. He killed one terrorist and wounded another.
On November 18, 1983, 57 passengers of the Tu-134, traveling on the route Tbilisi - Batumi - Kiev - Leningrad, became hostages of terrorists who demanded to sit in Turkey. During their disarmament, the situation got out of control: the criminals killed the flight attendant and the flight mechanic. The plane landed in Tbilisi, and the invaders were neutralized only the next day.
On June 7, 1990, a terrorist showed up on board a Tu-154 en route from Grozny to Moscow. The invader demanded to land in Turkey, but was shot dead.
On March 15, 2001, the Istanbul-Moscow flight was attacked. Tu-154 was captured by Chechen fighters. Then a Turkish citizen and a Russian stewardess were killed. Saudi special forces released passengers on an international flight at the airport in the city of Medina.
As you can see, air terrorism and politics are intersecting concepts. It remains to ask for protection from heaven: in every sense of the word.
Author: Vyacheslav Kaprelyants