MOSCOW, November 11. /TASS/. Foreign intelligence services told a Russian pilot that if he agreed to hijack a MiG-31, they would make all his dreams come true, enticing him with loads of cash and visions of a life of luxury, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a video.
The video showed correspondence between foreign spies and the pilot. In it, they tried to convince him to hijack a MiG-31, promising him money, a change of citizenship and a new identity.
"The goal of our operation is to give you a chance to radically change your life and fulfill all your wildest dreams and beyond. This isn’t my first operation and I can say with complete confidence that everything will be smooth sailing. Some day soon, we’ll be throwing back a few beers in Munich, pretty girls all around us, having a good laugh over this story," a foreign curator wrote to the pilot.
To show that they were serious, feeling that they had the pilot on the hook, the foreigners tried to reel him in, sending him a video of a pile of money and a note which read "Come on over, we’re expecting you. This is what this amount looks like."
A Ukrainian pilot was also involved in the recruitment on the part of Ukrainian intelligence. He instructed the Russian pilot how to land the plane on his own. He even offered to train the Russian pilot, while a man named Alexander who introduced himself as an operative of Ukrainian military intelligence promised to stage a plane crash in order to conceal the hijacking. "Money in any currency. Do you want it in your bank account?" the Ukrainian spy added.
Parallel to the recruitment process, the Russian pilot received numerous phone calls from representatives from the Bellingcat project (recognized as undesirable in Russia). One of them, who claimed to be journalist Sergey Lugovsky, was trying to find out about the system of training military pilots in Russia.
What exactly was planned?
As the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported, Ukrainian and British intelligence planned to hijack a Russian MiG-31 jet armed with a hypersonic Kinzhal missile. They tried to recruit a navigating pilot but he informed his commanders and, supervised by counter-intelligence, proceeded to toy with the adversary.
Foreign intelligence plotted that the Russian navigator would poison the pilot, applying poison to his oxygen mask. After that, he was supposed to turn the plane toward a NATO base in Romania. He was promised $3 million for the hijacking. However, Russian special services believe that the goal was not to obtain Russian weapons, but to stage a provocation by downing the jet in a NATO member country’s airspace.