A wounded Soviet air force pilot commandeered a MiG-29 jetfighter after a shootout at a Black Sea airbase Saturday and made a daring flight to Turkey, where he requested political asylum in the United States.
The Soviet Foreign Ministry immediately summoned Turkish ambassador Vocan Vural in Moscow and demanded the immediate return of the aircraft and pilot, the official Tass news agency said. A Turkish diplomat said the jetfighter would be returned but gave no indication of the pilot's fate.Turkey's semiofficial Anatolian news agency said the pilot, Alexander Zuyev, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, asked for political asylum in the United States immediately after landing at Trabzon airport in northeastern Turkey at 5.10 a.m. The request was relayed to the U.S. Embassy in Ankara.
The defection was believed to be the first by a Soviet pilot across the Turkish border.
"After making an armed attack on a sentry who was guarding the parking area of combat aircraft and wounding him with firearms, Alexander Zuyev, a military pilot who had been discharged from flying duties for health reasons, hijacked a fighter plane from Tskhakaya airfield (near Batumi in Soviet Georgia) to Trabzon airfield in Turkey today," Tass said.
Diplomatic sources said the 28-year-old pilot also suffered gunshot wounds in the shootout with guards but managed to get the aircraft off the ground and out of Soviet airspace before landing in Trabzon, about 100 miles from the Soviet airbase on the Black Sea.