Aeroflot Flight 36075, known also as Tu-134 hijacking in Ufa (), was an aircraft hijacking committed by two deserting Internal Troops soldiers on September 20, 1986, at the Ufa International Airport. Three soldiers of the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Junior Sergeant Nikolai Matsnev, Private Sergei Yagmurdzhi and Private Aleksandr Konoval, stole a taxi early in the morning, shooting two policemen along the way. Konoval escaped after killing the policemen and was later arrested, while Matsnev and Yagmurdzhi, having reached the airport, stormed aboard a Tupolev Tu-134 and took 81 people hostage (76 passengers and 5 crew members). Two hostages were shot dead immediately after the hijacking. The criminals demanded that the plane be sent abroad to any country unfriendly to the Soviet Union, threatening to shoot the hostages. Alpha Group of the 7th Directorate of the KGB was called in to free the hostages, which stormed the plane after lengthy negotiations to free the hostages. Matsnev died in the ensuing shootout, and Yagmurdzhi was wounded in the leg. Flight attendants Elena Zhukovskaya and Susanna Zhabinets played an important role in rescuing the passengers, convincing both soldiers to release all the hostages.
Background All three future criminals, 20-year-old Junior Sergeant Nikolai Matsnev (born in 1966), 19-year-old Private Sergei Yagmurdzhi (born in 1967) and 19-year-old Private Aleksandr Konoval, were serving in military unit 6520 of the Internal Troops of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs, stationed in Ufa in a building on Karl Marx Street. They were listed in the so-called non-staff group for the capture and liberation of an airplane from terrorists, so they specifically studied the plans of all airplanes from the An-12 to the Tu-134, and also repeatedly trained to penetrate the airplane and use special means to fight terrorists.
Before joining the army, Matsnev studied at the Arkhangelsk Naval School: he only went on a few voyages as part of training exercises, but he often talked to his fellow soldiers about travelling abroad and encouraged them to escape. A few months after the start of practical training, he proposed a bold plan to his fellow soldiers: to hijack an airplane, armed with modern small arms, and demand that the pilots fly the plane abroad, where they could later hide and live as they pleased. However, none of the conspirators had a clear idea of where they were going to fly. The reason for the talk about escaping abroad was that all three soldiers were guarding prisoners from whom they purchased drugs, and at some point their superiors found out about these actions. The soldiers were afraid of ending up in a penal colony, where, as former guards, they faced the fate of being constantly subjected to beatings and humiliation. Yagmurdzhi and Matsnev themselves had used drugs while still in the civil service, and Matsnev was a long-time drug addict.
The plans were discussed with only three fellow soldiers: all six discussed the plans in the kitchen, not bothering to be secretive, and the officers of the unit who witnessed the conversations did not attach much importance to what they heard, considering it all to be nothing more than empty chatter. As a result, Matsnev led a group of four conspirators, which, in addition to him, Yagmurdzhi and Konoval, included Private Igor Fedotkin.
Hijacking a taxi On the night of 19-20 September 1986, Matsnev, Yagmurdzhi and Konoval, who had been assigned to duty in the company, left the unit without permission. Matsnev broke into the weapons room with the keys he had and took with him an RPK-74 machine gun, an AK assault rifle and an SVD sniper rifle, as well as 220 rounds of ammunition for them. The escape of the soldiers from the unit became known to the duty officer of the KGB of the Bashkir ASSR at 3:40 a.m. The soldiers climbed out the window of the canteen and fled the unit, stopping a taxi with the driver Nikolai Bashkirtsev and, under threat of reprisal, ordering him to go towards Podymalovo, where the fourth conspirator, Igor Fedotkin, was on guard. He was supposed to take an armored personnel carrier out of the park, which they were supposed to use to get to the airport. At first, the need to shoot at his fellow soldiers did not concern Fedotkin.
That night, it was pouring rain outside. As they approached the checkpoint on the way out of Ufa, Bashkirtsev convinced the soldiers that they were guaranteed to stop the taxi and that they would not be able to get through, but that they could get through in a private car without any problems. The conspirators decided to take another car, but at that moment they noticed a UAZ-469 police patrol car from the non-departmental security department of the Leninsky District Department of Internal Affairs of Ufa. Deciding that they were being followed, they opened fire on the stopped car. As a result of the shootout, Sergeant Zulfir Akhtyamov and Junior Sergeant Airat Galeev were killed, without even having time to react. About 60 bullets were fired at the car: it was known that the car had left in response to reports of three deserters fleeing.
Aleksandr Konoval, who was sitting in the back seat, was so scared that he immediately fled with an unloaded SVD rifle, leaving his accomplices alone. He caught a passing KAMAZ truck and asked for a lift to Podymalovo, claiming that he had left without permission to go on a date with a girlfriend. As it later became known, Fedotkin did not wait for his accomplices and abandoned the plan to steal an armored personnel carrier, and Konoval tried unsuccessfully to persuade Fedotkin to shoot him. The fugitive then hid in one of the owners' houses, telling the owners that he was on training exercises, but the house was later surrounded by soldiers. Konoval attempted to commit suicide by stabbing himself in the chest with a bayonet, but the deserter was saved by doctors.
Hijacking of the airplane Before reaching the airport, Matsnev and Yagmurdzhi abandoned the car and hid in the forest plantations. They were going to shoot Bashkirtsev, but he convinced the deserters not to kill him, promising them that his son would never serve in the Soviet Armed Forces. He immediately ran to the police officers, telling them what had happened. However, they did not send a squad to the airport, but took the driver to the head of the Ufa Ministry of Internal Affairs, which gave both deserters time to prepare to hijack the plane. At 04:40 they reached the Ufa International Airport. They made their way to the airfield, hiding in a ditch. The closest aircraft to them was a Boryspil Air Squadron Tu-134A of Aeroflot Airlines (aircraft USSR-65877), operating flight SU-36075 on the route Lvov - Kyiv - Ufa - Nizhnevartovsk and landing in Ufa for refueling. There were 81 people on board: 76 passengers (including eight women and six children) and 5 crew members. Most of the passengers were oil workers flying to Nizhnevartovsk for a shift change. During refueling, the passengers were sent to the waiting room. The ticket check was carried out by the person on duty for the meeting, Lyudmila Safronova, and the crew included stewardesses Elena Zhukovskaya (Ganich) and Susanna Zhabinets (Kibarova) and second pilot Vyacheslav Lutsenko.
An hour and a half earlier, the airport had received a call from the police warning about armed men heading towards the airport, but despite the warning, the planes were not stopped from boarding and the ramps were not pulled back, and the crew of Flight 36075 was completely unaware of the warning. At 04:43, the deserters found themselves on board Flight 36075, taking advantage of the fact that the flight engineer was busy removing the plugs from the engines and removing the parking brake chocks from under the wheels. The fugitives, having pushed the last passenger and duty officer Safronova inside the car, slammed the door behind them. The flight engineer did not notice the intrusion of strangers and, having climbed the ramp, tried to open the door, but was thrown down by a kick from a soldier's boot. Safronova's cries about armed men were initially perceived as a joke, but the captain of the plane ordered the door to be locked and everyone to take their seats, and he also dragged Vyacheslav Lutsenko into the cabin in time.
Matsnev took aim at Susanna Zhabinets and ordered Zhukovskaya to convey the demands to the crew - to take off within 20 minutes and direct the plane to "any country unfriendly to the Soviet Union" (the criminals themselves initially intended to fly to Pakistan), threatening to kill Zhabinets in case of refusal. 20 minutes later, shots were heard in the cabin. Yagmurdzhi shot with a machine gun passenger Alexander Ermoolenko, an assembler for the Zapsibneftegeofizika department, who was flying to Nizhnevartovsk for a shift: Ermoolenko, a large man with a criminal record, moved towards the soldier with threats. Matsnev, mistakenly deciding that someone was shooting at his accomplice, fired a burst from his machine gun: one woman who was covering a child was wounded in the shoulder by bullets, passenger Yaroslav Tikhansky (a shift worker, an electrician from the Ukrnafta drilling department) was also fatally wounded, and another bullet hit Yermoolenko's body.
Rescue of hostages Ground services were shocked by reports of the hijacking of the plane. All employees involved in the events under the Operation Alarm plan were immediately put on alert, and soon Alpha Group of the Seventh Directorate of the KGB arrived at the Ufa airport. The operation to free the hostages was led by the commander of Alpha Group, Gennady Zaitsev, who formed capture, support, observation, blocking and sniper groups, which took up their positions immediately. A temporary headquarters was set up in the airport building, headed by the head of the KGB of the Bashkir ASSR, Vadim Mishchenko: the headquarters did not break off communications with Moscow until the end of the operation.
Since Matsnev and Yagmurzhi were serving in a freelance anti-terrorist group, they knew the structure of the plane and the potential entrances and exits through which those who would attempt to free the hostages could enter. This seriously complicated the work of Alpha Group, and there were also reports of a possible sniper providing cover in the vicinity of the airfield, who was ultimately not found. Alpha Group operatives believed that they could only attack from the tail and from the cockpit of the plane, but both criminals knew this very well. Considering that they were armed with military weapons, the only chance to neutralize them was to shoot them immediately and on the spot, otherwise the deserters would have shot all the passengers. Meanwhile, Yagmurdzhi and Mantsev demanded that the crew members surrender all their service weapons: after consulting with management, the pilots handed over one pistol without cartridges, keeping the other pistol for themselves (the criminals did not know how many weapons the crew had). The passengers were not allowed to go to the toilet, although the flight attendants were free to walk around the cabin.