Back in the mid-nineties, I was living in Moscow when I was invited by the Prime Minister of Mordovia to visit his region. The invitation came about when I had met the Prime Minister in Moscow, through connections of mine in the Russian Senate, and he’d asked if I would go to look at a factory that he was trying to raise money for.
Shortly afterwards, I boarded a Russian turbo-prop plane, better known as The Flying Bicycle, and accompanied by my General Director, we set off on the three-hour flight to Saransk, the capital of Mordovia. We arrived on what was a typically unpleasant, dark, and dank February day, and had a tour of the factory. As it turned out, there was nothing I could do to help. We were then escorted to a typical Russian lunch of meat, fish, vegetables, vodka, more vodka, and yet more vodka. At 4 pm, we were taken to the airport and made to wait for a slightly unusually long time before we boarded the plane. It was pretty cold and dark but I eventually walked up the airplane steps and into the shelter of the plane, where I was told to walk towards the front to take a seat. There were only about eight passengers, of which we were two, so we did as we were told and took our seats.
Following take-off, I looked behind me and noticed that the people sitting in the aisles had black balaclavas that only revealed the whites of their eyes and their mouths. This seemed strange. As time went by I needed the loo, so I walked to the back of the aircraft and noticed that the people sitting in the window seats all had black hoods over their heads and then I saw that each of the guys in the aisle seats had an Uzi submachine gun between their legs! I was wondering what the hell was going on; I’d paid for a commercial flight with the national carrier, Aeroflot, so it’s not as though I was on a military plane. I asked for an explanation but the flight attendant brushed over my question.
When we arrived in Moscow, the plane taxied for quite a distance to an area where there were large numbers of trucks with flashing blue lights. Over the Tannoy system, we were requested to remain seated.
I then turned around and watched what was happening:
One by one, the guys in the aisle seats stood up, and they were much bigger than I thought they were, with each of them being well over six feet tall. Those men then grabbed hold of the person wearing a hood and it became apparent that they had been handcuffed behind their backs for the entire flight. The guy in the balaclava then put his Uzi in the small of the ‘prisoner’s’ back and marched them off the plane. This all happened with military precision until each and every one of them had disembarked. I then asked, again, what had been going on and somebody told me that the guards were special Spetsnaz troops and that’s why their faces were hidden. It turned out they had travelled to Saransk to transport some really bad guys back to Moscow.
Who they were or what their fate was, we will never know.
